


The Mysteries of Marcie Fleach: Chapter 17-The Battle of Crystal Cove

by Sketchpad



Series: The Mysteries Of Marcie Fleach [17]
Category: Scooby Doo! Mystery Incorporated (TV 2010)
Genre: F/F, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-26
Updated: 2017-10-11
Packaged: 2018-12-19 23:34:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 45,724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11908548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sketchpad/pseuds/Sketchpad
Summary: Every clue Marcie Fleach had dared to follow has led to this, the murderous end-game of a mysterious man whose shadow fell upon her and her father, long ago.Now, with knowledge and courage as their only tools for victory, can Marcie and her friends rescue their town from Greenman's mad crusade, before he, finally, writes his name in history with innocent blood?





	1. Chapter 1

The Thorn Soldier stalked in a steady shamble from the sidelines towards Daisy, Red, Jason, and Stone, who stayed close to each other on the forty-five yard line, studying it.

The creature moved hesitantly, as if deciding who it should go after, first, but then, the decision was made for him, as Daisy and Jason began waving hands, jumping, and calling it insulting epithets, to get its attention.

The Soldier's primitive pseudo-brain processed the motion and noise as provocation, raised its thorn-sword and tendrils for the attack, and charged at the two, who yelped and ran in the direction of the far end zone.

With the plant creature fully preoccupied, Stone ran across the field towards the Emperor's Box.

Warily, Greenman saw his approach. The ploy for them to use the weakest of their number as bait to lure the Soldier away way a good one, but he couldn't say that he approved of what followed to capitalize on that, and wondered if this was some desperate, suicidal play of the man.

In the shadowy interior of the box, his right hand hardened into a wooden, dangerous-looking, thorn-clawed parody of itself, fairly capable of gutting such fools.

The sheriff reached the bottom of the box, but rather than attempting to climb up the clean, linen drapes to get to Greenman, he leaped up and snatched down a handful of gold sash and attached wreath, instead.

To the Questoids in the stands, their programming couldn't allow them to care less about what sides to take, only what orders to carry out. But, this was a rare study on human behavior and combat in a stressful environment, in real time, and if Greenman wanted them to taunt the visitors and cheer the monsters, to keep up this charade, then they would do so.

At one point, they responded with simulated gasps, a programmed reaction to being unsure of what the human was doing, being so near their emperor, but with Bronson, quickly, running back across the field, he was soon rewarded with the return of their jeers.

* * *

Marcie and Velma relied on the constant booing of the audience to cover them, as they crept quietly towards the two beasts.

Somehow, the Hounds still sensed them, while they guarded their lifeless prey, their heads turning in the girls' direction, so they could see the deputy's red ruin painted on the creatures' faces.

The reaction was understandable and immediate. Both girls stopped cold upon the horrible aftermath of the attack, daring to go no further.

"They must've been bred from carnivorous plants. Are you sure that this will distract them, Marcie?" Velma asked, shakily.

"Well, the solution will harden in contact with air," Marcie demurred. "But, we're totally improvising, here. There's just enough solution in each bulb for one good squeeze, so if we aim for their mouths, we should be safe."

Both Hounds stood and faced them, fern-manes flattening and red mouths growling in defense of the kill.

With calming breaths and trembling hands, the girls slowly raised their bulbs and carefully aimed at those mouths, both knowing that once they squeezed, there was no going back.

"Okay, on three," Marcie whispered. "One, two, three."

Two thick streams of white liquid jetted from the tips of the bulb syringes. They arced through space and massed on the top of the confused beasts' muzzles.

The moment contact was made, however, the creatures didn't run from the goop. Who or whatever created them, had given them the same instincts as dogs, and similar behavioral traits, as the two began angrily snapping at the solution, allowing more and more of it to flow into their maws.

The bulbs were now spent in Marcie and Velma's hands, but they had to stay and see their fruits of their handiwork, and hope for success.

The Hounds tried to chomp and expel the mass from their mouths, but enough seconds had passed that the sticky, expanding gel had already began to grow spongy, then rubbery, and finally, solid.

As plant life, they were spare from suffocation, however, their jaws were now held fast, and their mouths were completely blocked up with Quick Key solution. All they could do was roll on the ground, shaking their heads in frustration, and use their long, thorny claws to, vainly, try to dig out the obstruction.

Thoroughly surprised and flushed with their sudden success, both girls gave each other a high-five. The distraction had worked.

"We're the girls of science!" Velma crowed. "How do we solve problems?"

"With science!" Marcie answered, cockily.

While the two were cheering, against the booing crowd, the wheels in the Herb Hounds' heads, primitive as they were, were turning.

They had just fed, but their bloodlust, their need to hunt, had not abated. They were still capable of movement, and just as importantly, as they stood before the surprised girls, drawing deep furrows in the turf with those massive thorn-claws, they were still armed.

As the audience's cheers rose in volume, the two beasts split up, each stalking a target apiece and hoping to flank them, as the girls backed off.

They hoped that they weren't dog-like enough to have the instinct to chase down prey, if they turned and ran, but the remains of Deputy Carlton proved otherwise.

"Marcie, you said _safe_!" Velma fretted, the wheels in her own head turning for an escape plan.

"I, also, said _improvising_!" her friend countered, looking around the arena for something to use, since it wouldn't take the beasts long to outrun them.

If Velma had a rejoinder, it was canceled by the sight of the two Herb Hounds shaking their manes and scratching at the ground, fiercely, as if riling themselves up for another hunt.

She interpreted that body language to mean one thing.

"Run!" she cried, tearing off down the field, Marcie and the plant-creatures close behind in the wake of new cheering.

* * *

"Keep up, Jason!" Daisy called out to him, while she heard the ponderous, rooted-foot falls, as the plant monster stayed on them and focused its anger on the taunting duo.

With the creature bearing down on them, Jason huffed as hard as he could, trying to stay ahead of the Soldier. He didn't want to scare himself by looking back to see how close it might have been, but his mind nagged at him about situational awareness and that he should check, at least, once.

He gave a glance over his shoulder, and noticed, to his horror, that it ignored Daisy, and was bearing down on _him._

His fear kept his vision locked on the sight of the creature, and he promptly lost his footing on the field's turf, falling in a tumble.

He righted himself from the fall, sitting up in time to see the monster jog towards him, planning to use the momentum of its charge, and its lifted weapon, to strike true.

Even with Daisy turning around to wave and yell, desperately, to get the creature to chase after her, Jason knew that couldn't move his bulk away in time. He whimpered loudly and covered his eyes to spare himself the sight of his killer.

The sound of a rising bellow from the distance ended in a running Red clipping the creature low from the hip in a perfectly executed tackle that put all of his momentum and strength into the hit. The Thorn Soldier, confused, was lifted from his feet and crashed, up-ended, into the ground.

Both figures rolled in the turf, with Red recovering first, and barking to a stunned Jason, "Get up, rookie! You can rest when you're benched! Now, c'mon, we got a game to win!"

Jason nodded with a quiet grunt, rolled himself back to his feet, and ran over to where a grateful Daisy waited.

Red stood up, soon after, and noticed that the Soldier was getting up, as well.

Not waiting for it to come up with a tactic, Herring stepped up to the monster and gave it a serious gut punch, slamming his fist into solid, animated wood.

With a loud yell, he favored his sore knuckles, and backed away, but not fast or far enough for the Soldier to reach out with its three tendrils and snatch Red off his feet, by the neck.

Digging his nails into the skin of the vines, for purchase, he found them near impossible to loosen, as the plant creature suddenly raised and reared its sword to run him through.

A wreath tied to a length of gilded sash fell over the thorn-sword, and with a strong pull, stopped the weapon in the midst of its killing motion.

Over the raucous displeasure of the crowd, Stone whipped the sash high and loose, so that it neatly looped around the arms of the Soldier.

In its confusion, the creature turned its attention to Stone, and released Red, while Stone, being faster, began running around it, wrapping it in tighter and tighter bonds of cloth with each pass, until the Thorn Soldier, now thoroughly bound, struggled mightily, failed, and then, fell over.

Stone jogged over to the incapacitated being, grabbed a fistful of rooted feet, and proceeded to hog-tied the creature, ending with him, triumphantly, standing in its back, and letting loose a cowboy whoop that echoed across the arena.

"That's how Dead Justice would've done it!" he crowed, as the rest ran over to him.

"No doubt, sir, but you may want to get off of it, now, Sheriff," Daisy warned, opening the loaned flask of acid. "It's going to get a little messy."

"No," said the sheriff, holding out his hand to accept the bottle without debate. "I owe them for Carlton."

The flask was passed to Stone, who walked over and emptied it all over the back of the Soldier's head, liquefying the bulb into a puddle of destroyed plant matter, as it struggled under Stone's grim satisfaction. Finally, the creature ceased its fight, and lay still.

The robotic crowd rose to its feet in a thunderous roar of disapproval, and the match wasn't even done, yet...

* * *

"V, we've got to split up!" Marcie called out. "We're leading them back to the guys!"

"Go for the sidelines!"

Both girls broke away and ran for the camera-lined periphery of either side of the field. The Hounds split up, as well, however, due to the awkwardness of the hardened mass in their heads, both running and steering was more difficult, forcing them to stop, occasionally, to scratch and try to loosen it, again, to no avail.

This bought the girls time to enter the sidelines and look for momentary shelter, or a weapon.

Marcie frantically scanned each mounted video camera she passed for a solution. Could she electrocute her pursuer? The cables that gathered around the cameras' bases were too thick to break, and there was no time to tell if they were even powered. All she could, uselessly, deduce was that their lenses were cleaned often, as she saw bottles of glass cleaner on a nearby bench.

Velma slowed her run to a cautious jog among the cameras on her side, the path between them and the benches made uneven by the haphazard piles of power and video cables running from the cameras.

In the distance, she could see the rest of the gang and Sheriff Stone dealing the Thorn Soldier, and the debate between playing bait and self-preservation flashed in her mind.

She shook it away and risked a glance behind her for signs of her hunter. The loping Herb Hound was already closing and was just seconds from overtaking her. She cursed herself for her lack of focus, as she accelerated into a sprint, with a yelp.

Something held her foot, and her world spun, as she snagged on a pile of cables and fell forward, crashing into another tangle of lines.

Velma twisted hard in her entanglement to see the Hound rocket in on her, but then, loops of cable snared its flashing legs and pulled taught, as it ran forward, bringing it down in a hard, clumsy crash, mere feet from a struggling Velma.

The Hound still worked with enough slack to edge closer to Velma and slash at her with its claws, while she felt her cables tighten around her calves and ankles, particularly, when she pulled against them, in a panic, to free herself.

Cause and effect, the rational side of her mind thought.

Realizing that she still had inches of space to spare, and fighting against her rising fear, Velma relaxed her kicks and movements, allowing her to sit up, reach out to the lines, and unravel them from her lower extremities.

"Opposable thumbs for the win," she muttered.

The curved tip of a questing thorn-claw hooked against the strap of one of her Mary Janes. With a vigorous shake, she loosed the claw, as the cables relinquished their clutch on her legs.

Finally, Velma stood up, and then, gathered the cables that almost doomed her. Holding them loosely in her hands, she tossed the tangle over the beast's head, where it looped and ensnared. Along with its constant thrashing, the whole mess soon weighed the creature down and restrained it, like a mass of black constrictors.

For good measure, she gave one end of the chaotic coils a strong tug, tightening and securing it to its trap, before a force, from behind, rammed the breath from her, knocking her to the ground.

Velma twisted around to see her attacker, her back sore, and saw the other Herb Hound stalking her, confident that she could do nothing while she was prone.

The patient Hound focused its killer instinct upon Velma, spreading and flexing the claws on its fore-paws, eager to rend the flesh from this troublesome prey. It dug its rear paws into the turf, preparing to launch into a fatal pounce, when it suddenly jumped in pain, its leafy flank, smoking.

A sprinting Marcie stopped between Velma and the Hound, armed with a spray bottle at the ready. She gave a spritz of whatever was in the container at the monster's head, making it back away from her friend, with another jump, its head and mane of ferns starting to brown and chemically burn.

"Sorry, V!" Marcie apologized. "Rover got away from me, for a second!"

"What _is_ that, Marcie?" Velma asked, wondering how on Earth she had the time to whip something up, while on the run.

Marcie spun the bottle by its trigger on her thin finger. "Good ol' glass cleaner."

Incredulous, Velma echoed, "Glass cleaner?"

"Glass cleaner, with fifty percent more NH3(aq), otherwise known as aqueous ammonia!"

"Of course!" Velma exclaimed, as she was helped back to her feet. "Aqueous ammonia is toxic to plants! Genius!"

"Thanks," Marcie said, handing her the bottle. "Cover me, while I give Rex, there, a bath."

She walked over to the side of the trapped, squirming Herb Hound, took out her acid flask, and poured a generous amount on its head. It ran down past intervening cables, bubbling their insulation, and then, made contact with the monster's head, rendering it into a puddle of liquefaction that stilled the beast for good.

When Marcie returned to Velma, Velma eyed the cowed, remaining Hound, tending to its wounds, with predacious eyes of her own, and said, evenly, "Let's switch places."

"Yes, ma'am," said Marcie, tossing the closed flask to her, and receiving the spray bottle, in turn.

* * *

"Wicked tackle, Red," Daisy complimented him, surprised that he could move that well under pressure.

"Best blocker in Crystal Cove High's football team, the Crush-taceans. Go Crabs!" Red reminisced. "I couldn't play long, though, because I was sidelined with an injury."

"What was it?"

"Ingrown toenail."

Daisy rolled her eyes, seeing Marcie and Velma jogging towards them and the others, while Red defended his position.

"Hey, those kinds of things really hurt, y'know?" he pouted.

In the air, almost unheard over the audience's grumbles and low-spirits, a buzzer rang, overhead, and a distant scoreboard displayed in glowing numbers: HOME-3/VISITORS-0.

"Yeah! All right!" Red whooped, flexing his muscles and posing amid the incoming boos and hisses.

"Are you entertained?" Velma asked the audience, mocking the unhappy crowds, swayed by her own emotions of the kill, and not really caring if the spectators were simple programmed to respond to the affair. " _Are you entertained?_ "

Marcie gave her a surprised smirk. "Not as much as you are."

Velma took a mental look outside of herself, and noticed that her scholarly composure and self-control was thrown out the window.

"Oh, I didn't-I didn't mean..." she tried to explain, as she reddened. "It was just, uh, I was...caught up in the...You know, I'm just going to be quiet, now."

Greenman stood in his box overlooking the battlefield and applauded. "Well fought! Well fought! Just wonderful! Marcie, I thought you and your ridiculous band were just lucky buffoons, but this tells me that you're much more than the sum of your parts! After I show the world where I stand, I must have you on for the grand finale, to finish you off under the knowledge that you failed those you came here to save."

With a gesture, the Questoids guarding the exits walked to the center of the field, corralling the group.

"Take them to the clubhouse, while I prepare to show my followers the depths of my unyielding dedication," he ordered them. Then, he glanced at the corpse of the deputy, below. "And, someone, throw that thing on the compose heap."

The armed guards herded the fighters, and marched them towards an entrance that led underground, the mocking calls of their triumph fading, the deeper they went.


	2. Chapter 2

The group was led through the brightly lit, but narrow, and almost mazelike corridors of the stadium's near-subterranean clubhouse. Their escort had brought them halfway, and then returned to the surface arena, leaving a single guard to lead them the rest of the way.

Although, with the Questoid up front, it offered good opportunities for any of them to peel away from the convoy and try to escape, past experience with the robots' speed, strength, and dogged tenacity, continuously dispelled such thoughts.

Reaching the rear area of the complex, the group could see the Questoid turn to a closed, wooden door in the side of the hallway. Opening it, he gestured for them to enter the room.

Past the threshold, they saw that it was the foyer of a large players' lounge. Six plush chairs sat in the center of the hardwood floor, with a couch off to one corner, and a padded, wrap-around bench encircling the lounge's rear. Pictures of players, shelves of sports memorabilia, and a single water cooler completed the decor, and they were not alone.

Seven people sat, forlornly on the circular bench, two in matching, orange-highlighted uniforms, and the other five in regular civvies, but with small white bags between them.

Two people sat in the central chairs, while one person sat alone on the couch in the corner. As the group walked in, and the robot left them, locking the door behind it, it became a reunion of sorts to all but Velma, when they recognized who sat before them.

"Flim Flam, you little so-and-so!" Daisy exclaimed, as if they weren't in a possibly terminal situation.

"Hey, Daze."

"How did you get here?"

"How else? The professor," the student smirked. "I tell ya. Nothing but trouble, everywhere he goes."

"Hardly," the dour Hatecraft sniffed. "I normally attribute such qualities to you."

"Daisy, you know them?" Marcie asked her.

"Not the professor. I don't go to his class, but just about everybody knows Flim Flam, especially when he stole from the dean. He's a campus legend."

She regarded Flim Flam, again. "Oh, yeah, Suzie's been asking about you, lately."

"Suzie?" he brightened. "Ah, LEG...good times. Good times."

"LEG?" asked Velma.

"Lambda Epsilon Gamma," Daisy said. "My other sisters' sorority house where all the wild girls are."

"Yeah," Flim Flam agreed. "I tell ya, those girls are getting their PhD's in P-A-R-T-Y, man!"

He looked at Red, appraising him. "Hey, big guy! I see you around campus, sometimes. Those specimens over at Mu Gamma Tau would probably like a guy like you in their frat. I could've been a pledge, but what kind of fraternity has a height restriction?"

"Yes, I'm sure that's all very fascinating, but how would any of this help us in our current situation?" The professor sighed.

"You're right, Professor," Marcie concurred, moving to the topic at hand. "Anyway, we've got your message."

Hatecraft looked puzzled. "Message? What message?"

"The book on your desk that was opened to the Roman Coliseum. That was your way of telling us you were taken to the stadium, right?"

"Oh, no," the professor remembered. "Actually, I was just reading it when Flim Flam and I were abducted. Is that why you're here?"

Mentally wiping the egg from her face, Marcie explained. "Well, in a way. We found a clue that led us here, a receipt for booking the stadium by the man who captured us. We only know about the kidnappings a little while ago, and I, kind of, hoped that one clue would, sort of, kill two birds with one stone, so here we are."

"Yes, but why _are_ we here?" he pondered. "Flim Flam and I were about to leave town to study the Celtic/Freemasonry temple that suddenly appeared in Washington D.C., a few days ago. A monument to what these alternate Founding Fathers were like when they were influenced by druid mysticism while creating this new America. I believed that the Enlighteners were threatened that I may discover the secret behind their vast, global power structure, and kidnapped us."

"Believe me, Professor," Marcie sighed. "It's a lot weirder than you think."

* * *

Standing in the middle of the football field, a druid prepared.

Changed from his business attire into flowing vestments of white and gold that shimmered under the arena lights, Greenman began planting a seed into the turf with each reverent pace, while Questoids operated the sideline cameras, following his progress.

High above, played out on the grand face of the Jumbotron, people, both in America, and on the other side of the world, were watching him perform this ritual with rapt interest.

These were just a handful of his followers, modern-day druids and worshipers of the druid faith who adhered to the traditional ways of blood and sacrifice. To them, neo-pagans were weak of spirit, at best, and completely heretical, at worst. They were invited weeks ago to be privy to their legendary, holy champion's ascent upon the world stage, once more, to be kicked off with this grand sacrificial event.

Perversely, this had all the air of a pre-game happening, a small affair to help whet the appetite of the visitors and build anticipation of the main event, as Greenman finished pushing the tenth and last Manchineel seed into the ground.

From where he stood, he reached for a flask of pure water that hung on his gilded belt, uncorked it, and, walking backwards, proceeded to water the ground, carefully.

When he was done, he faced his work, raising his hands and offering up an ancient prayer.

The turf began to break on the surface and turn over, erupting dark soil in its wake, as the seeds within germinated with supernatural speed and vigor.

Soft saplings lanced out of the earth, and stiffened, as they started to become thicker, older, and more developed. As their trunks grew broader and stretched to their full fifteen meter heights, their bark took on its signature grayish-tint, and their canopies bloomed explosively, decorated with small, greenish flowers.

Finally, a grand and deadly grove of ten trees, with five on either side, stood before the Hierophant.

The viewers above him added their collective cheers to those of the Questoids in the stands, awed by the divine power gifted to him by the obvious strength of his devotion.

Greenman motioned to a Questoid nearby, and told it, when it arrived, "Bring them out. It's time."

* * *

Professor Hatecraft, thoughtfully, leaned forward in his chair, his mind wrestling with the incredible truth and proof of the tale Marcie had told him, backed up by her friends in the places that they were personally a part of.

"Then, it's true. That Greenman fellow you and your mother came to me about _is_ a druid, and somehow, he went back in time to change history and bring about a new global, pagan paradigm. Incredible, but if that's the case, then why haven't we been changed, as well?"

"Heck if we know," Red shrugged. "People been scratchin' their heads about that for days, when they weren't losing them."

"One mystery at a time, guys," Marcie advised. "Anyway, the reason we came to your office, Professor, was to show you a history book that Greenman personally used to help take control of the past."

"Really?" Hatecraft asked, his interest rising with the intrigue. "Personal accounts of a time traveler. The things he witnessed and done, while he changed the very course of history! Where is it?"

"Well, it's...in my car," Marcie admitted, once again, cleaning metaphorical egg from her face. "Sorry, Professor, but, I memorized some of the things he wrote, and I was hoping that we could put our heads together on this."

"Very well, what have you got?"

"Okay, he wrote almost everything down in Gaelic, except for a few words in English, like 'water of the king' and 'threefold death.' Plus, I saw Greenman before we were sent here, and he looks pretty good for someone who's been fighting for centuries. It was pretty rough, back then. You would think he'd have some scars, or something, to show for it."

"You think that there's more to him than that?" The professor considered.

"I don't know, Professor," Marcie said. "But, unless he just used his time machine to _hop_ from century to century, he's been living a very _long_ and very _charmed_ life."

"Interesting. As a devout druid, if everything he's done has been in honor of his gods, then it stands to reason that they may have given him some kind of protection, proof against physical harm and aging, while he works their will, which would explain his mentioning of the threefold death."

Daisy fretted, getting what she could grasp of Celtic mythology. "So...not only is all of this some kind of holy mission to this guy, but he's immortal, too?"

"Possibly, this all just speculation, so far," Professor Hatecraft was quick to say. "Anyway, I'm not sure I understand the meaning behind 'water of the king,' however, I...do know about the threefold death, and as a result, I know how we are connected with it."

"How?" Flim Flam asked.

"Sacrifice, my boy," he answered, grimly. "He plans on doing a threefold death on either us, or the populace, as well, to appease his Celtic gods."

"What's all of this stuff you keep talking about?" Stone asked.

The professor sat back comfortably, crossed his thin legs, steepled his fingers together, and gave the listeners a brooding, thoughtful gaze, heavy with importance.

"Uh-oh, he's going into Lecture Mode. I love this part," Flim Flam whispered to his audience, with a smirk. "Time to let Hatecraft be Hatecraft."

"In many ancient myths around the world, kings, heroes, and gods were bigger than life, and, sometimes, the only way they could die was not from one cause, but by _three_. Mythically, a threefold death was death involving a tree, drowning or poisoning, and by burning. That is the first form of it. The second form of the threefold death is split into three distinct parts, each one, a sacrifice to three distinct gods.

"Three?" Stone griped. "Sheesh! How many gods did these guys worship?"

"Many, but since Greenman is English, three were known to the Celts of Briton, at the time, Teutates, Esus, and Taranis."

Velma spoke up. "Jinkies! Then, he's planning on sacrificing us to them! A different sacrifice for each god!"

Hatecraft nodded. "Apparently so. For Esus, fatal wounding by trees; for Teutates, drowning; and burning, for Taranis."

Velma glanced over to Marcie, and asked, "Is it too late for that cat to put me back into stasis? Oy!"

"Then, how do we stop him?" asked Jason.

The professor raised a thin finger. "Remember the threefold death. Kings, heroes, and gods succumbed to it."

He regarded Marcie, next. "You theorized that Greenman may have been alive for centuries, while he was on his mission. Assuming that you're correct, if the power of the threefold death is as intricately woven into his religious life, as it is in his personal life, then as a religious hero, at least, in his own mind, he, too, may be vulnerable to this special kind of end."

That threw Marcie and the others that understood what was happening, for a loop. Greenman could be stopped? He could die, if need be? They had something over him that they could use to force him to choose self-preservation over his menace?

"What? You mean-"

"Yes, Miss Fleach," Hatecraft nodded, sagely. "Someone could destroy him by visiting all three deaths upon him, at the same time. It's the only way."

Marcie gave a shaky sigh. She suddenly wished that what Hatecraft and she were bouncing around were just theories, because the difficulty in killing anyone with protection that specific just made stopping him a whole magnitude harder.

If it came to that, she reminded herself. Simply outwitting him would have been more preferable.

"Wow," she muttered, sarcastically. "No pressure, Professor."

Stone stuck a thumb out and pointed to the group sitting on the bench. "Hey, what's with the sad sacks sitting all the way back there?"

"Oh, they were kidnapped, earlier today, Sheriff," answered the professor. "They've been rather quiet since their arrival."

"Let me guess. They were taken from the supermarket," Stone conjectured, overconfidently.

"Actually," Velma said, matter-of-factly. "It looks like they all came from the Crystal Cove Mall. The bags on the floor by their feet all have the mall's logo on it, and the two in uniform? They work for Orange Ya Glad. There's only one franchise of that chain in town, and it's at the mall."

"Oh, yeah. I forgot. Supermarket. Mall. Close enough," Stone shrugged.

Jason whispered to the gang after he noticed the man sitting, in solitude, on the couch. "Hey, guys, check that guy out. Look at his badge. He's one of those scientists from Quest's lab. What's he doing here?"

"Hey!" Stone, suddenly, yelled across the lounge to the man, everyone near him, cringing and mortified. "These kids wanna know who you are!"

The gentleman stood and sighed, as he walked over to address them. "If you must know. I'm the one who turned the Questoids against Dr. Quest, so that maniac, Greenman, could betray him."

"You did?" Jason asked. "Why?"

"To save my family. I was lead programmer for the Questoid project. When I was assigned to the Gatorsburg lab, and my family moved here, they were targeted by Greenman. He said that he would sacrifice them, if I didn't help him take control of the robots, so I wrote an override code that could be uploaded into them, wirelessly. The plan went well enough-"

"We know," the gang, minus Velma, unisoned in deadpan.

"But then, I was kidnapped outside the base, when the staff evacuated," he continued.

"How come?" asked Velma.

The man's head dipped in regret. "Insurance. I wrote the code. I knew too much. He's going to sacrifice me to make sure that those robots stay loyal to him, and to take care of any loose ends."

"It's not over, yet, sir," said Velma. "We'll think of something. Besides, this is my first time seeing these Questoids in action. They look like they run on a pretty complex operating system. I would have loved to have seen the code that could turn _those_ programs around."

"Thanks. If things were different, I might have given you all a better demonstration of what my OS, in them, can do," said the programmer. Then, he thought of what they had to contend with, concerning the wayward machines, lately, and quickly amended what he said, saying apologetically, "But, I guess you've got all the demonstration you can stomach, for now, huh?"

As a point of illustration, he reached into his pants pocket and put a flash drive on the table.

"What's that?" Red asked him.

"The override code," he sighed. "Not that it matters, but it's all in there. They never thought to search me. It's ironic that my legacy is stored in there, and it, ultimately, doomed me."

Just then, the door opened, and all eyes saw the lone Questoid walking into the lounge.

The programmer was about to risk being caught picking up the flash drive to hide it, but when he looked to the table where it rested, the drive was gone. Before he had time to wonder what had happened to it, the guard locked eyes and pointed to him and everyone else, except the gang and the sheriff.

"Have courage, everyone," Hatecraft said, quietly, boldly straightening his posture as he stood. "Do not meet evil with a bent back."

"See ya on the other side, guys," Flim Flam dolefully added, as he and his mentor walked to the doorway.

The rest of the selected ones began sadly marching out of the lounge, nervous and fearful of their collective fate. Then, the door closed behind them.

"We can't let that wacko do to them what they did to Carlton! I won't allow it! _Justice_ won't allow it!" Stone growled.

Velma, thoughtfully, opened her hand to study the flash drive that she hastily hid in it. "Don't worry, Sheriff. I think we may have a way."


	3. Chapter 3

The ropes around their wrists were cinched tight and looped around the girth of the trees, and with working tugs, the Questoids secured the victims, spread-eagle, with their backs to their own personal, green alters, facing out to unsympathetic cameras, and even less caring viewers.

Pinioned to his Manchineel, Professor Hatecraft watched as a Questoid wielding a manual pole pruner reached above him and began slicing nicks across the boughs over the professor, and then, finished by lightly carving an x through the bark directly over H. P.'s head.

When the robot left to attend to the other trees, Hatecraft turned his face to address his student, who was already tied to a neighboring tree.

"Flim Flam," the professor called to him. "How are you fairing?"

The teen glanced over to Hatecraft, and muttered, "I feel like a piñata. How are you holdin' up, Professor?"

"I'm trying to forestall seeing my life pass before my eyes out of immediate curiosity about something," the teacher said.

"What's that?"

"Why did you decide to take a course in psychology, anyway?"

The student gave a chuckle, despite his surroundings. "Oh, that's easy. I wanted to know how people think."

"So you can better deduce how to repair their fragile psyches?"

"Nah, Professor, so I can better take them for all they've got," Flim Flam grinned. "No sense being sloppy about it."

"Of course," Hatecraft sighed. "So much for molding young minds."

"I still say that we should've fought them off, Professor," Flim Flam said, as a non-sequitor.

The professor shook his head, sternly. "No, we were smart not to resist. No telling what these machines might have done if we had fought back. The situation was too dangerous, and as long as you are under my tutelage, I am responsible for your safety."

"Aw, Professor, I could've taken them. They're just a bunch of suckers."

Hatecraft wished that one of his hands were free so he could rub the stress from his temples. "Flim Flam, in your juvenile mind, just about everyone you meet is a, quote-unquote, sucker."

"Not everybody, Professor," the teen said, looking at him with rare sincerity. "I don't think you're one."

"Oh," the professor said, caught off-guard by such sentiment. "That was...rather kind of you to say."

"Forgive the pun, but this is gettin' sappy, Professor," the boy groused, letting his emotions get the better of the conman inside. "C'mon, with your brains and my savvy, we can bust out of this place! Whadaya say?"

H. P. sighed, looking around at the other frightened victims in his field of view. "Your enthusiasm is admirable, Flim Flam, but that may be easier said than done."

* * *

The Questoid assigned to guard the lounge, stood beyond its door, motionless yet alert. It was content to fulfill that function, running the occasional program in its computer brain, more often than not, a diagnostic, to efficiently pass the time, as the corridor was empty of threats.

"Help! Help!" a voice from the lounge cried out. "There's been a fight! Somebody's hurt! Help!"

The robot stiffened and turned to the door. It was understood that the prisoners were to be executed; however, they were not to come to any harm before then, meaning that the Questoid was, ironically, programmed to protect the humans, in the interim.

It opened the door and looked into a dark room. A mass of shadows moving along the curved bench in the back told it that the prisoners hadn't escaped, but there were, also, no immediate signs of distress from combat. Further investigation was deemed warranted.

It decided to step deeper into the room, keeping its optics trained on the prisoners. Thus, it did not see the simple trap that it had walked into.

A trap so small, it was the size of several LEMP capsules lying unnoticed on the hardwood floor. One unwitting step, later, and the whole room flashed like a lightning storm, before the guard felled over.

Jason ran ahead and turned the lights back on, while Sheriff Stone went through the machine's pockets, fished out its found ring of keys to every door of the clubhouse, and then, followed the others out of the lounge.

Peering up one end of the hallway to the other, gratefully, showed no threats.

"Okay, I need a janitor's closet," Marcie instructed them. "I need chemicals."

As they headed up the corridor, they soon came to a T-section in the hall, where the rest of the group split up and took either end, with Marcie, Red, and Velma discovering doors that led to a row of restrooms, Daisy and Stone finding the clubhouse's mechanical/electrical room, on the other side, and Jason seeing a door marked 'JAN,' next to it.

"Found it," Jason called out.

The rest met up with him, and with the door unlocked, Marcie dove into the large supply closet, her eyes sweeping over brooms, mops, brushes, and every container of cleaning fluid she could see.

Grabbing copious bottles of glass cleaner and generous jugs of bleach, she set them outside the closet. Then, she went back in, and pulled out a cardboard box full of small, empty spray bottles that she noticed lying on the floor.

"Help me bring this back to the lounge," Marcie said to them, as she grabbed the box and went up the hall. "We've got bottles to fill."

"Wait," Velma said to the sheriff, as the others began to heft the chemicals. "While you're working with those chemicals, give me the key ring, so I can unlock us from the clubhouse."

"All right," the sheriff said, handing her the keys.

"I'll, also, need you to come with me," she addressed a stunned Jason.

He nearly blanked out from the infatuation. She wanted to step away with him, all he could hear in his love-addled brain was _'I need you...'_ , and best of all, Marcie would be nowhere to interfere.

"Uh, s-sure, Velma," Jason stammered, giddily. "Anything you say!"

"Good," she said, simply, as they went down the hallway, towards the public, forward end of the clubhouse.

* * *

A video camera, covered in a plastic tarp, and closest to the Emperor's Box, angled up to aim at a pleased Greenman overlooking and residing over the grim spectacle.

He regarded the camera and made a bold proclamation.

"Traditionalists, I had been absent from you, lo these many years. My mission was such that I had to depart, but for a little while. Yet, I know what my absence from you cost all of us. It gave the converts we gathered the time and social leeway they needed to question our ancient rituals, failing to understand that nothing is more powerful than a bond between the faithful and their gods, and nothing strengthens that bond more, than blood."

The speakers of the Jumbotron rang with the cheers of his followers, as the image shifted from viewers in the States, to others, elsewhere in the world.

"These neo-pagans, with their liberal views, want to worship the gods, but don't want to do what's necessary to achieve that. A bloodless faith is a weak faith, for how can we appreciate life...without embracing the reality of death? And so, my people, what I do, I do to honor the gods, to show what the world once believed, and what it will, once again!"

He pointed to the rafters, dramatically, and somewhere, in the building, a Questoid activated the arena's expansive sprinkler system.

Unseen by the spectators and Greenman, under the cover of the man-made rain, four heads popped out from the shadow of the unguarded, above-ground clubhouse entrance, and watched, dismayed, as an indoor torrent lashed across the football field.

Around the grove, Thorn Soldiers stood as sentries, while Herb Hounds prowled and serpentined among the trees, giving the proceedings the look of some perverse, wooded wonderland.

"Oh, no!" Marcie moaned.

"What's wrong?" Stone asked. "Why are the sprinklers on? What are those trees doing here?"

"It's Greenman's first sacrifice, by tree! That's what those seeds were for! Those trees are Manchineels!" Marcie explained, glancing to her friends. "Remember back at the Botanical Gardens, guys? You can't stand under them in the rain because the water would mix with that killer sap of theirs."

"That's why the people are tied to those trunks, and why the sprinklers are turned on," Daisy reasoned, horrified.

"Well, let's cut 'em down," Red said.

"We've got to get rid of those guards, first, and all of this bleach and glass cleaner is useless, now," Marcie fretted. "It'll wash right off, even if it does reach those plant monsters. We've got to improvise."

"What about your Insta-Ice capsules," Daisy suggested. "Can't we freeze those guys?"

Marcie shook her head. "Possibly, but their wood looks relatively soft. I couldn't throw my capsules hard enough to break against it."

Daisy pondered, for a moment, and then said, with realization, "What if something else could? All you need is more force, right? Back to the clubhouse, gang! I've got an idea!"

* * *

Jason watched Velma disappear under yet another desk, in another unlocked office. So far, three, along with the receptionist's kiosk in the clubhouse's lobby, were opened, entered, perused around their desktop computers, and were discovered to only have USB wireless adaptors in them.

"What are we looking for, Velma?" he asked, feeling a bit bored. "Just about every room we've been in has a computer in it, if that's what you're looking for."

"It's more than that," she explained. "All the computers we've seen, so far, are all connected to wireless adaptors."

Jason shrugged. "Yeah, that means that they're all receiving info from some wi-fi hub's network. We're, obviously, in a hotspot."

"Exactly, and I'm looking for that hub, a computer that's, hopefully, connected to a powerful router," Velma said, climbing out from under the desk.

"Something to do with that flash drive you took?"

"Everything."

* * *

A hostage, one of the two employees from Orange Ya Glad, blinked some irksome water from of his eyes in frustration. He didn't understand why he was trussed up against a tree, and was now getting drenched. This all seemed far too strange just to be a simple prank.

While he pondered this absurdity, he barely noticed a tickle of irritation working its way from the height of his scalp, the sides of his face, along the nape of his neck, and down the length of his back.

"If this wasn't bad enough," he complained, aloud, wiggling against the bark of the tree, and feeling wet and crotchety. "Now, I'm getting itchy, too?"

Just then, as a light mist from under the canopy began to settle in from above him, he found himself blinking more intermittently.

A sudden cough blasted from him, followed by more bouts of coughing that began to last longer and more persistently, to the fearful point that, eventually, he discovered that he no longer had any bodily control over it, or his ease at breathing.

A spasm overtook him, as fire suddenly raked along his head, face, neck and back, as if he were struck, repeatedly, with an invisible scourge. His face was a grimacing, blister-scarred mask of immediate suffering, where his eyes were now screwed shut, as opening them only brought unbearable agony.

His breathless cries and sobs of pain, confusion and terror started to rise with the others into a lugubrious chorale, as the sprinkler water became contaminated with the hellish sap and oils of the scored trees they were tied to, slowly and chemically killing them within inches, to the great delight and fervor of the Questoid and Jumbotron crowds.

A Thorn Soldier angled to look at a nearby victim, to make sure she didn't escape, and then, it exploded with a shower of wet crystals, as ice spread across its wooden body, slowly killing its cells from within.

A nearby Herb Hound reacted to the fallen plant monster, moving to where it thought the attack originated. Two long things from a dark tunnel swiped across its neck and throat, slicing them open, and felling the beast.

Greenman noticed the commotion and agitation, by the grove, and called out, "What's going on, out there?"

The answer came in the form of four figures coming out of the shadow of the underground entrance, armed and dressed for battle.

Helmeted Red and Sheriff Stone sported the shoulder pads and other pieces of upper armor from a football player's uniform, while Daisy and Marcie wore only the helmets, but there was meaning behind that.

The males carried a staff each; a cobbled-together invention of Daisy's that she christened a _longsling_. They lowered these staves made from broomsticks, used their greater strength of arm to draw up the sling, the removed elastic waistband from jock straps that were looped through and tied into the holes at the end, where the brooms would be hung on hooks, hooked the waistband around a bent nail at the other end, and placed a single Insta-Ice capsule in a roughly carved notch, just before the nail.

Bringing the longsling back to a ready position, held like a shotgun, they both selected their newest targets and thumbed the band free of the nail, catapulting the capsule at sufficient speed to shatter against the bodies of the surprised Soldiers, dutifully encasing them in lethal cold.

Due to the fact that these were short-ranged weapons, the two of them had to be close enough to be successfully counter-attacked, hence the protective armor. They were the obvious tanks of this operation.

As for the girls, limited protection, but more speed and maneuverability were the watchwords of the day, as they wielded the pole pruners that were left behind near the entrance, like slashing naginatas, harassing, out-flanking, and then, crippling any Hounds that came in to investigate, or defend the Soldiers.

"These work like a charm, Daisy!" Red laughed. "How did you come up with them?"

"Oh, I used to crawl around my uncle's attic, when I was little. I saw an old spear gun, one time, and I was just inspired." she said, cheerily, while her pruner's teeth ripped across a Hound's leafy back, gashing the sap out of it.

"Hey, less jawin' and more shootin'!" Stone advised, sounding and feeling ever more the cowboy he always wanted to be, as another Soldier became entombed in ice.

"Do you see, my followers?" Greenman called out from his box to the camera watching him. "Our enemies are desperate, and where is the rest of their little band? I don't know how they escaped, but all they've earned is my wrath and a front-row seat to their own failure and doom!"

He brought fingers to his temple and concentrated, as he spoke, aloud. "Soldiers! Hounds! Eliminate them, and then, search the clubhouse for the others. Get rid of them, as well!"

His commands were carried across the field, where Marcie, grimly, heard them over the constant shower, after she and Daisy dispatched the last Hound. "You heard him, let's make sure the rest of these guys don't get past us. Whatever Velma and Jason are doing, they don't need these things ruining their day."

Daisy ran over to the Manchineel closest to her, and yelled to the victims. "Hang on, guys! We'll get you out!" She then turned to Red. "How many of these things are left?"

"No prob!" Red replied, easily, aiming his longsling at an approaching Soldier. "Watch this!"

He released the sling and from a fair distance, the Insta-Ice capsule shattered against the creature's bark, freezing it into place. "There! That's the last of those Soldier things. You cut the people down, and we'll cover you!"

Quickly, the girls took a tree each, ran behind them, and while their helmets shielded them from the toxic dew of the Manchineels, they began sawing the ropes of the captives, to the new howls of displeasure from both the Questoids and the viewers, worldwide.

Some distance from the rescue party, a partially frozen Thorn Soldier, twitched its bulb-arm, moving it gradually. The limb slowly rotated and twisted, until, finally, the weight of it caused it to tear and hang from its shoulder by the thinnest scraps of plant tissue.

Marcie spared a moment to see this, musing to herself, "Hmm, cellular breakdown's happening much faster than I thought. That can only be a good thing." Then, she went back to cutting.

The bulb fell, unnoticed, to the ground, and with magical, instinctual drive, its tendrils probed the wet earth, and then, dug, pulling the bulb-arm further and further into the depths of the soil.

Soon, the other Soldiers who were still, more or less, immobilized, were becoming partially thawed under the continuous downpour, with their bulb-arms, also, twisting with increasing torque, to tear off, and then, plant themselves, clandestinely.

Once the prisoners began falling to the ground, Red and the sheriff ran over and carried or walked them over to the clubhouse entrance, carefully laying them down, so that the water would soothe and wash the poisons from their faces.

Professor Hatecraft and Flim Flam were the last to be released, lying on the ground to recover.

"You'll be all right, citizen," Stone tried to pacify Hatecraft, who, despite his injuries, seemed adamant about moving. "Don't be impatient. We'll be out of here in a jiffy."

"B...Beh..." the professor wheezed, his arm trembling, as he tried to point it.

"No, citizen," the braggadocio misunderstood. "The name's not Ben. It's Bronson. Sheriff Bronson Stone."

"Beh...Behind...you!"

"Huh?" Stone asked, glancing over his shoulder to see the broad shadow of a Thorn Soldier coming up to him.

"Whoa!" He ducked, as the tip of a thorn-sword sliced where the nape of his neck was, a moment before.

"Look out, guys!" Marcie warned, running from the grove with Daisy.

Stone stood up, and with Red joining him, leveled his longsling into a firing position, interceding between the recovering people behind him, and a small horde of Thorn Soldiers made up of limping, wilting, frost-damaged, and curiously _one-armed_ specimens, and reinforcements that weren't there, moments before.

"Where did they come from?" Red yelled, arming his staff.

"How did they get back-up, so fast?" asked Stone, wondering what other headaches they would have to deal with.

"I think the other Soldiers _grew_ them," Marcie posited, brandishing her pruner near Stone.

"You mean they can _replace_ themselves?" Daisy asked, incredulously. "Unfair, much?"

Marcie looked over at the two males. They had been launching capsule after capsule at their targets. Now, that the water from the sprinklers was nullifying their effects, she worried how long they could hold out against them, and protect their charges, before they ran out of ammunition.

"Guys, how many capsules do you have left?" she asked them.

"Two," Stone answered.

Red patted his vest pocket, and it flattened. "Aw, man, I'm out! Hey, Sheriff, how come you've got more?"

"Because I don't fire my weapon like I'm playing a video game," the sheriff chided him. "It's called fire discipline."

He glanced to Marcie and Daisy. "Okay, you girls switch up! Give us the pruners, and you take the slingshots, split the ammo between you, _and_ _guard those hostages!_ You're my deputies, now!"

The weight of Stone's command and his conference of deputy upon them brought Marcie's memories rushing back to Dead Justice, another dire situation and another sheriff deputizing them. She hoped that at the end of this case, everyone _and the sheriff_ will walk away from it with a good story that they can all get wrong, years later.

With the swapping of the weapons, Stone stepped up to the approaching throng. "We'll handle this," he growled.

"Yeah!" Red concurred, eagerly. "Let's turn 'em into a salad bar, and I hate salads!"

"You're all right, kid," the sheriff nodded at him. Then, he let loose a bellow and charged into the enemy line, Red, running and yelling, close behind.

The length of the pruners gave them the edge they needed to keep a safe distance, and still be able to engage with the Soldiers.

The ice-damaged ones were easier to face. Not only was being one-armed throwing off their balance when they swung with their sword-arm, but their frost-related injuries slowed them down, considerably, allowing a sidestepping Red or Stone the chance for a sudden, flanking decapitation of a semi-wilted head-bulb, dropping the monster to the muddy ground.

A headless Thorn Soldier, falling at the feet of Red, had the muck-covered teen, triumphantly, hooting in the torrent, raising his bladed weapon, like an Irish warrior born, none of which was lost of a suddenly mesmerized Daisy.

There was no denying that for a bad boy, he was, also, a bit of a softie, but here, in the midst of battle, she could see the glint of danger in his eyes, under the mud, and, with a blush, it excited her.

The newer troops were not so easy to dispatch, as they were intact, studied the simple tactics of the humans before them, and made sure that they tried to out-flank them by cutting them off, individually, and then, ganging up on each one, certain that the two man-creatures couldn't fight them all off, defensively, before one got close enough to strike with a sword thrust.

Indeed, one did managed to find an unguarded moment upon the base of Red's spine, and lumbered over to run him through.

Instead of great, terminal pain, Red felt a blast of winter behind him, as Insta-Ice splashed against the plant creature, burying it in its own little glacier.

Red sidestepped and deeply slashed the knee of a Soldier facing him, crippling it enough for him to kick it over. That bought him time to see who fired the precious shot. The jock strap on Daisy's longsling was loose, its ammunition spent.

Red gave her a grateful thumbs-up, and she returned the gesture, now brandishing the sling as a simple staff.

It wasn't a moment too soon, as the low, dark shapes of two Herb Hounds stalked from the center of the grove, and crept in the girls' direction.

"Head's up!" Marcie alerted.

"I could do with a little help, here!" Stone called out, swiping and slashing the pruner at the remaining Soldiers as fast as his tiring arms could swing, and as quick as he could twist to face them.

Red ripped through the napes of two Soldiers that were so focused on flanking the sheriff, that they hadn't notice him. As they fell over, Stone saw his opening and ran out of the trap the monsters sprung around him, following Red back to where the girls stood guard.

"Where did they come from?" asked Red, cleaning sap and wood from the pruner's serrated blade. "Are they replacements, too?"

"I wouldn't doubt it," Daisy moaned. "This looks bad, guys."

"I don't know what Velma and Jason are doing back at the clubhouse, but I hope they found a place to hide," Marcie muttered.

As the reduced group of Thorn Soldiers approached, steadily, one of the Hounds, suddenly, gave a commanding bark, startling everyone, and allowing the other Hound to bound at the group.

With a frightened yelp, Marcie fell to the ground, as the beast bolted to her location, leaped over her and the brandished weapons that missed it, and headed for the tunnel entrance.

Her glasses bounced out of her helmet, fouling her sight, but she recovered her wits enough to twist around and snap off a desperate, clumsy shot from the longsling, expending the capsule's spreading freeze against the inner wall of the underground tunnel, while the Hound ran down it, full-tilt.

"No! Jason! V!"

* * *

"Wait! This is it! This computer has a router!" Velma exclaimed, spotting the dark, multi-antennae device wired to the computer tower under the desk of the next office she and Jason had entered.

Jason looked past the innocuous desktop PC to the photos, awards, and trophies that were hung and shelved on the surrounding walls, signifying the importance of the place.

"It makes sense that the Head Coach's Office would be the hub of the hotspot," he said. "I wish we'd come here sooner."

"Hindsight's twenty-twenty," Velma replied, sitting in the coach's chair and turning the computer on. "I'll boot up, and then, I'll run the override code."

"Wait, is this going to work, Velma?"

"I'm...reasonably sure it should," she hesitated. "These aren't the same conditions that the programmer worked with, back at his base, but if Greenman brought all of his Questoids to the arena, this router should have the necessary range to be able to reach them...I hope."

The PC's wallpaper, a typical overhead view of a football field, appeared, along with a few folders tucked in the upper corner of the screen. Velma plugged the flash drive into the forward USB port, and waited. A window called "Questoid," popped into existence, filled with a descending string of folders, a moment later.

"Wow, nice directory!" Velma replied.

She moved the mouse, and brought the cursor over to a folder marked: Skeleton Key. It opened, revealing a small, but a potent file.

Velma, then read the text in the file, informing her of an alphanumeric string on display, below it, and what it did, specifically. "Ah, so _that's_ their password! So much for their encryption software. They're wide open, now. I can send the code to them."

She moved the cursor across the password, cutting and pasting it onto a blank bar, below. Under the bar were two commands to chose from: Enter and Cancel.

After clicking Enter, and after a loading icon spun, the computer informed her that, at that moment, every Questoid was now accessible.

"Yes!" she cheered.

Then, prompted by curiosity, Velma went back to the directory, moved the cursor to the folder marked: Systems, seeing a sub-menu of folders descend: Diagnostic, Sensors, Memory Access, and Remote Command.

An eager smile crossed her thin lips. Power was literally in her hands.

"But, that's not all I can do, Jason!" she gasped, megalomaniacally, "I can access their memories, hook into their optics and audio. I can hack them! Make them my puppets...my _slaves_! The power is literally in my hands!"

Jason felt the need to disregard his crush's exploration of her cyber dark side, and just reminded her, "Okay, fine, Puppetmaster, but could you stop the killer robots, first?"

"Right, right," she sighed. "Sorry. This is what happens when I'm away from technology for over a century. I'll just tap into their optics, so we can see what they see. Maybe we can find out what's happening with the rest of the gang."

Another small window popped up on the monitor, serving as a separate screen that gave a POV perspective from the arena's bleachers, down, incredulously, to a patch of trees.

"Hmm, good frame rate. Wait! What are those trees doing on the field?" Velma pondered aloud, making Jason to stand behind her and see for himself.

"Trees? No idea," he admitted.

"Maybe I can switch to a pair of eyes that can see around back of them," Velma muttered, experimentally tapping the eastern, and then, western directional arrow keys on the keyboard. The view began jumping from one Questoid's individual line of sight to the next, each jump bring the view further and further to the left side of the grove.

Finally, one robot was seated far enough to the left, that they could see, halfway, to the grove's other side. Lying on the turf, in front of the underground entrance, was a haggard group of bodies that the two recognized as the hostages from the lounge.

In front of the bodies were Daisy and Marcie, swiping and jabbing at a Thorn Soldier and an Herb Hound, with sticks, barely keeping them at bay. Because of the extreme angle of the view, Velma and Jason could just see Red and Sheriff Stone's attempts to repel the few Thorn Soldiers that tried to out-flank them, from their end.

"Jinkies!" she exclaimed. "Look! They're cornered by more of those plant creatures!"

This was not a situation that made Jason particularly sanguine. The two of them were too far and too unarmed to make any difference, and the dire knowledge that they may have taken on more than they could handle, put a dread in him so bad, that panic overtook him, easily.

He stepped away from Velma, and began pacing, tightly, in the center of the room. "But, we're in here! Wh-What do we do? What _can_ we do?"

He turned and walked to the closed door. "We have to do something, before Greenman knows that we're not out there, with them!"

He opened the door in time to see an Herb Hound prowling the hall outside of the office. It heard the door, and bounded over to Jason, who wailed and slammed the door on it, but not in time to lock it.

Terrified, he backed his full weight against the shoving door, and whimpered, "He knows!"

"Keep him out, Jason, while I try to think of something!" Velma told him, while trying to keep the rising fear from her voice.

The sounds of the beast ramming against the door and trying to work a wooden paw in through the threshold, along with Jason's blubbering, was distracting, as she mentally ticked down their dwindling options.

"No weapons, no chemicals!" she fretted.

"There's a phone on the desk!" Jason suggested, recovering from almost being knocking down by that last ram. " _Call the police!_ "

Velma gave a hopeless glance to the telephone near the keyboard. "They wouldn't get here in time! What do we have that can tear one of those things apart?"

For a second, she went back to looking at the screen within the monitor to see how their friends were faring, when she spotted the cursor resting on the sub-menu folder, Remote Command.

A folder screamed the solution to their problem directly into her fear-addled brain.

"That's it!" she yelled, clicking open the folder.

"What's it?" Jason asked, almost losing his footing from shoring up the door against another slam from the monster. "What do we-What do we do?"

"What else?" a desperate and fearful Velma asked, rhetorically, as she typed commands, and prayed that her reckless hunt-and-peck wasn't so fast that she made typos.

She tapped the Enter key. "We introduce them to the new boss!"

* * *

Wood clacked against wood, as the group parried the thorn-sword, -clawed and -toothed strikes of the single Herb Hound and the small number of Thorn Soldiers that doggedly remained.

Greenman had the satisfying feeling that the interlopers were having a hard time of it, and wanted to see their demise more clearly from that side of the grove. Knowing how sensitive their hearing could be, he bade the Questoids manning the video cameras across the field, "All cameras on the grove side of the field focus on the intruders."

The cameras tightened the angles of their coverage on the detectives' and hostages' last stand, as the dire image was sent up to the Jumbotron, so although his followers could still see it all from their televisions, Greenman could enjoy a private, imperial-class viewing of Marcie and the others' fall.

They were all wearing down, arms burning and slowed by constant defense. Their opponents closed in, forcing Red and Stone to huddle in with the girls, still facing out defensively.

Greenman debated with himself on whether he should release more plant monster seeds to the ground, and simply overwhelm his enemies, but he stayed his hand, and watched in fascination, wondering if three Thorn Soldiers and a Herb Hound could rip them all to pieces, thoroughly enough.

"It seems that my sacrifice will proceed, after all, with some additional lambs for the slaughter," he said, contentedly, smiling at a quick close-up of a tiring Marcie.

Just then, a massive call rose from the bleachers around him, and the field, all at once, catching Greenman by surprise.

"Orders confirmed!" cried every Questoid in the arena.

"What? What was that?" Greenman grunted in confusion, glancing hard at his appropriated machines. "I didn't-"

The robots in the stands all stood, and took up the chant, "Destroy all plant creatures! Destroy all plant creatures!"

Greenman stood up in his box, now in anger at this inexplicable betrayal, as waves of Questoids poured down the seated rows and ran across the field. He knew of their strength, and what that strength could do, if applied to his warriors, who now seemed considerably fragile, in comparison.

"No! No, you can't!" he implored, at first, trying to reason with them. When that failed to move them, he raged, "You obey me! _You obey me!_ "

"Don't despair and keep watching, my flock! You all will see these sacrifices offered up to our gods before the sun sets down on this wretched town!" Greenman cried out, looking up to the Jumbotron, to explain to his vexed and perplexed believers, but the screen hadn't switched back to the viewers.

Instead, it gave him a worthy view of Questoids swarming the oblivious Thorn Soldiers and Herb Hound from behind, bringing them down with their victims' yowls and grunts of pain accompanied by the sounds of wood cracking and breaking apart, before the stunned amateur sleuths and sheriff.

Then, the Jumbotron's screen became the portrait of a test pattern.

There was no reason to stay, Greenman knew. The beautiful beginning of his planned-out ritual was ruined, and if he remained, then he might captured or worse. Someone obviously took control of the Questoids, and he cursed himself that he didn't kill the programmer sooner, but there was no way he could have wrested control while he was being tortured.

That only left the few of Marcie's bothersome band that didn't leave the clubhouse. With whatever resources and access they came across, they turned his game around, and now, the full might of re-reprogrammed Questoids stood between his wrath and his foes.

Taking advantage of the robots' distractions, Greenman slipped out of his box, from the rear, ran quietly up the aisle, and out of onto the stadium's wide concourse to escape, cursing his turn of fortune, with a single word.

"Marcie," he hissed.

* * *

"I'm getting tired!" Jason wailed next to Velma, who was helping him keep the tenacious Hound out by bracing her shoulder against the door. "We're not going to make it!"

"Don't say that, Jason! We'll be fine!" she tried to convince him, but she was having trouble believing that, herself.

By her reckoning, too much time had passed since she sent the order to the Questoids, which begged the question: Were they obeying her, or were they too far out of range to receive the transmission, thus dooming them all?

"Velma, since this...this is the end, I-I might as well come clean about something," Jason wheezed with fatigue and panic. "I'm...in lo-"

The hard sounds of a violent scuffle breaking out behind him, took his attention away from his confession, as he listened in with Velma, against the door.

Furniture crashed and broke, a growl issued, followed by a canine yelp of terror and pain, ending with the breaking of thick branches. Then, a gentle knock came upon the door.

Velma, cautiously, opened it to see a female Questoid with disheveled hair and clothes give a polite smile, and say, "Orders received. Standing by for new commands."

Both teens sighed in gratitude, as Velma walked back to the desktop and sat down.

"All of you help the hostages and our friends on the football field, please," she told it. The robot soon departed.

"And I thought things were tough in the Old West," Velma muttered to herself.

Jason took a seat in a corner of the office, and said, jokingly, to lighten the mood, "Boy, some date, huh?"

Velma, barely paying any attention, as she looked to the monitor and watched her new thralls assist by the sidelines, asked, "What did you say?"

Remembering how everything he had fantasized about being alone with Velma had quickly turned into a scene from either a slasher or nature-run-amok film, Jason hung his head in disappointment.

"Oh, nothing," he sighed.


	4. Chapter 4

That evening, Greenman knelt before his shrine, his heart full of bile and fear. Today was witness to one of his rarest and most shocking defeats.

After giving himself time to think about what had to have happened in the arena, and who may have actually did what to turn that whole thing around, his mind still, stubbornly, came back to Marcie Fleach, as the primary instigator of it all.

It didn't matter that there was no earthly way she could have taken over the robots so completely, from where she was, it was her leadership of that rabble, however nominal, or her damnable luck, that snatched his offering, and his victory away.

And so, despite his simmering hatred for the girl, he needed to explain and atone for sin of failure.

Quieting his wrestling mind through the turmoil of his anger, he finally reached his way into the clearing of the mind-forest, where the three deities awaited him.

"My lords, my wretched failure stains my soul, and I have no right to come before you, but I only ask you, as a humble man, to see past my faults and continue to guide me. I still wish to exalt you for all the blessings you have bestowed upon me, but my enemies still stand between me and your glory. What must I do?"

The three gods spoke as one. "The young woman you ensnared with your schemes, now stands before you, as you once stood before Rome, heart afire in defense of village and father."

"As I once stood before Rome…in defense of village and father," he pondered. "But, I was too young, and I failed to save either. Rome invaded and took what she wanted…all I had. That's why I came to you."

Then, suddenly, the simple genius of an idea came hard upon him, and brought a sly, eager smile to his face. "Yes, and I must do the same…to take what _I_ want, and to make _her_ fail!"

"Indeed, a plan had _blossomed_ and _bloomed_ in your mind. Our guidance has, once more, taken _root_ in you," they hinted. "But, be cautious! She is a druidess, in spirit, if not in name; she is the alchemist, the truth-seeker, and the warrior who will face you cloaked in a she-demon's fury. Be cautious, Emperor. Be cautious..."

The animals living in the pitch-black of the forest around his home, sensed his presence, and gave him a wide berth, as he hiked through the Pine Barrens seeking out a suitable clearing.

At last, the dark shroud of the canopies gave way to a wide patch of the starry sky, as he stepped out onto a field ringed with woodlands.

Greenman strode with purpose to the very center of the vast opening. There, he took a large pouch of seed and a flask of spring water from his belt. With careful paces, he walked the complex pattern of a wide triskelion in the grass, sowing seeds and watering them, as he trod.

When he was done, he stood outside the pattern and waited.

There soon came a soft sound ahead and below him, the sound of grass blades and roots tearing, of earth disturbed, and a green field bearing drawn in lines of black soil, under the starshine.

Within the borders of the triskelion, the land gave birth to alien figures and low shapes, silhouetted against the sky. Thorn Soldiers and Herb Hounds, almost one hundred strong, stayed where they emerged, their new-born senses taking in the cool night, their pseudo-brains waiting for their commands.

"Robots. Machines," Greenman said with bitter disdain. "Why did I think I needed _them_? This world has changed me, as much as it did my faith, and for the worse. I turned my back on the Green, and was punished for it. I will do so, no longer."

He touched his fingers onto his temple in telepathic communication to his bellicose crop, and said, quietly, "Rest, my army. Feed on the earth and grow strong, for tomorrow, my crusade will sack one last, poor town."

* * *

The mail truck was left idling on the curb, as a postal worker walked across the lawn of a suburban home, on the residential outskirts of town. Although a professional, she was confused by the recent turn of events concerning her job.

No longer called the United States Postal Service, her superiors back at headquarters informed her that it was now called the American Union Postal Service, and although its origins were now different, its function and hierarchical structure were still true to the erstwhile organization.

She stuffed the mail through the slot in the house's front door, and then heard the sound of small feet padding on the grass behind her.

_'Dog,'_ she thought, reaching for the repellant on her belt.

She calmly turned, and raised the can up at a sinewy, four-legged, fern-covered creature, and froze.

It looked impossible, alien, and it moved on its own volition. Everything in her brain told her that whatever was in her can, it wouldn't possible be enough.

The can fell from her hand and rolled on the lawn, grabbing the Herb Hound's immediate attention. It leaped at the object, sniffing it and turning it over with its claws.

The postal worker took that opportunity to run back to her truck, in a wailing panic, put it in gear and take off, up the street. What she saw up the next block, made her stop the vehicle and freeze, again.

A shambling, leafy green host of tall, powerfully-built plant-men were marching in the middle of the street, and fanning out through the neighborhood, approaching any morning jogger, person going to work, or homeowner getting the mail from their yards, with menace.

Since the Herb Hounds were, undoubtedly, faster, they were the vanguard, scouting ahead and clearing paths for the Thorn Soldiers to take on their march.

The mail carrier turned her truck around, and accelerated from the block, with three Hounds in eager pursuit.

She needed to get away, she needed to call for help, and just as importantly, she needed to find someone else to cover her shift, because, at least on her route, the good people of Crystal Cove were not going to get their bills and alimony checks, today.

* * *

"Did you notice that the cops didn't read us our rights, yet?" Red grumbled to a nearby Velma, as they, and the rest of the gang sat in the police waiting area.

"For the second time," she instructed. "We're just here to be questioned on what we saw in the stadium, yesterday, Red. We're not under arrest."

"The only good thing to come out of all of this, is that, no matter how weird all of this turned out, because of what happened to Deputy Carlton, Greenman has to be a wanted man, by now," Daisy mused aloud.

"Yeah," Jason added. "Let's see him try any of that sacrifice stuff, when there's an APB out on him. That should slow him down, and force him to lie low." He hoped that Daisy's logic was sound. He was in no hurry for a rematch with the man.

Out of all of them, Marcie looked the most skeptical about that. "I don't know, guys. Greenman may be hamstrung, but he's rich, which means that he has resources, plus, he's real slippery. In any case, I went over his history book, last night, for more details. There were some more things that he wrote, in English, but still most, in Gaelic, and I don't want to miss any details, like what Greenman meant when he wrote 'water of the king.' What king?"

The gang, then turned their attention to the sound of the door of the Sheriff's Office, flanked by two waiting deputies, opening and the following sound of the sheriff, himself, saying to the other, inside, "If you won't do it for me, then do it for the kids! That nutcase just took out one of my men, and I am not going to allow him to do the same to * _you_!"

His guest briskly walked from the office, and the gang had the rare privilege of seeing their mayor up close and in person. However, she was not in much of a handshaking mood.

"Bronson, I don't want my people to see me cocooned around police protection, while they don't know when this crisis will end!" Mayor Nettles countered.

"I know!" he said. "That's why I'm only giving you two deputies. If we weren't so busy, I'd assign half the force on 24-hour shifts!"

"And how would _that_ look, Bronson?"

"It would look like a _man_ trying to _protect_ his stubborn _mayor-wife_!"

Decelerating in their collective work to listen, it was equally rare for the police station to be privy, whether they wanted to be, or not, to the drama of the two of them. Professionalism, it seemed, wasn't always a strong bulwark between their opinions how things got done.

The tinny voice of a reporter relating the local news on Stone's office TV, gave an awkward respite from the tension.

"The staff of Crystal Cove Hospital is still trying to figure out the pulmonary edema epidemic plaguing them," she said. "Although administration tells us that they will not turn away new admissions, if nothing is done soon, this may push staff and resources to the breaking point..."

Janet took that time to take a glance at her watch, roll her eyes in annoyance, and sigh to her husband. "Okay fine, Bronson. I'll keep the deputies, but only because I don't have time for a debate. I have to hurry back to the office to come up with something to calm the people. Have you got things under control, here?"

"You know I do," Stone placated. "And if the people can't see that you're thinking about them, then maybe they don't deserve to be here."

"Bronson, you'd make a lousy mayor," she replied, shaking her head with a smirk.

"That's true."

"Take care."

While the mayor and her escorts left the station, Marcie continued to muse on the strange passage Greenman had written. Somewhere, in the back of her mind, she subconsciously, kept finding some vague, nebulous importance in why he wrote that.

"King's water?" she muttered. "King's...No, wait! No way! Not _king's_ water! _Royal_ water. _Aqua regia_! Greenman's an evil genius!"

Red raised a ruddy eyebrow in confusion. "What? First you don't want this guy put away fast enough. Now, you're saying he's a genius?"

Urgently, Marcie stood from the bench and walked over to Stone. "Sheriff, we have to go to the hospital. You have to convince the staff that they have to evacuate the patients from there, like right now!" The sheriff was, typically, slow to consider.

"Mary Jane, I don't have the time to go off on one of those half-baked theories of yours," Stone dismissed her. "There's nothing going on at the hospital that the doctors can't handle. Now, if your questioning is done, I have to prepare a manhunt for that wacko with the plant monsters, and that's on _top_ of the vandalism and looting that we're already trying to keep a lid on."

The walkie-talkie clipped to Stone's belt, suddenly, squawked for attention. "Sheriff! Sheriff! This is Bucky! Come in!"

"This is Sheriff Stone," the sheriff answered. "What's the situation?"

"Sheriff, you are _not_ going to believe this, but we're getting reports of...plant monsters moving through the town. They're attacking everybody they see out of doors. We've told people to stay in their homes, but it looks like a group of those things broke from the group and surrounded the hospital!"

"Are they breaking in?"

"No, sir. They're just standing outside, like they're guarding the place. The press already got here, but we've got men standing by to try and get rid of these things."

"Stay where you are, Bucky," warned Stone. "Those creatures are dangerous. Tell the men that I'm on my way. Stone, out."

"Believe me, _now_?" asked Marcie, in a huff.

"Normally, there's always time for a good 'I told you so,' however, now's not the time," Sheriff Stone pontificated. "How do we go up against an _army_ of those things? We just barely dealt with them in the stadium. What good are bullets gonna be to them?"

"Stone, you look upset, dude," Red commented.

"Don't you know that the best way to relieve stress..." Daisy added.

"Is gardening?" Marcie slyly finished.

* * *

_Hanley's Hardwares_ , with its half-boarded up facade, had survived its bout with recent looters, as the proprietor George Hanley tended his counter with a watchful eye, looking both within, and sometimes without.

It seemed like a boon to his business when he heard that people needed more tools to help shore up their defenses against the sudden rash of vandals and thieves.

Now, he heard the sound of vehicles parking in the lot, outside, and watched the front door, expecting it to open with customers, or, at worse, more vandals and thieves.

The door swung open to allow Sheriff Stone and a group of teenagers to enter his store, and although he wasn't familiar with the youngsters, the sight of the sheriff brought a grateful smile to his lined face.

"Hey, thanks for saving my store from those looters, last week, Sheriff!" Hanley said, reaching out to shake the man's hand, firmly. "What can I do for you?"

Stone stood up to an officious height, and said, in a straight, if regretful, face. "I'm afraid that we're going to have to loot your hardware store, Hanley."

"What?"

* * *

The Clue Cruiser and Red, on his motorcycle, followed Sheriff Stone's police cruiser into the normally bucolic neighborhood of Crystal Cove Hospital, but found that they all had to maneuver through a cordon of news vans and transmitter trucks before they could park next to the other police cars along the far curb of the property.

As Stone stepped out of his car, he noticed Bucky coming towards him, and asked, "Bucky, what are all of these news crews doing, here?"

"They just showed up a little while ago. I guess they've been covering the other monsters coming to town. We don't know what to do, Sheriff. The monsters haven't done anything, yet, but we don't want to shoot them, if they do. They're too close to the hospital."

"They're probably counting on that," Marcie said. "Not to worry, though. We have something that will change all of that."

"Bring the men around, and we'll get you loaded up," Stone told Bucky, as he walked around to the trunk of the cruiser.

He unlocked the door, and as the other officers gathered around him, he revealed the appropriated booty of the hardware store: pruning poles, economy-sized bottles of weed killer, and large, portable sprayers.

"Uh, Sheriff, it's good that you have a green thumb, and all, but-" a confused Bucky said.

"No, Bucky," Stone explained, taking a pruner. "These are our weapons. Trust me. These'll work on them. Okay, everybody grab something, and follow me."

The officers did as instructed, selecting pruners and filling sprayer tanks with herbicide, then they walked beside the sheriff, and formed an offensive line by him, when he stopped a few yards from the wary Thorn Soldiers.

The teen gang went to the Clue Cruiser's forward trunk, armed themselves, and then, joined the line, moments later.

Marcie could feel every camera and reporter's eye on her, felt the weight of the world watching this, all of them wondering what in the world was she and other teenagers doing in the middle of a police action.

Was her father watching her? Did he care, if he was?

"All right, you plant monsters, listen up!" Stone bellowed. "This is Sheriff Bronson Stone, and I'm giving you until the count of three to leave this property, immediately, or you'll face the full might and force of the Crystal Cove Police Department, and I know you don't want that!"

The closest Soldiers to the human line regarded the loud, bellicose man, while the other Soldiers maneuvered behind them to set up a defensive line, and Herb Hounds slinked to its sides, forming flanking positions to close around the men.

"One!" the sheriff counted, tightening his grip on his gardening implement. "Two! Thr-"

Bucky, already tense from this unfamiliar encounter, fired an early shot from his backpack sprayer. The stream arced its short distance across the yard, and splashed against the 'face' of a Soldier, who backed off and fell over in pain.

Its wooden body convulsed, as its bulb-head began to shrivel, giving it the appearance of an old onion. The body, finally, grew still, as the head rotted and fell from the body, all under the eyes of both parties.

Bucky looked over and saw Stone's iron, disapproving stare, wilting, himself, under it.

"Sorry, Sheriff," he apologized, meekly, but the damage was done.

The officers, as a whole, knew that they were not used to fighting like this. Judging from the physicality of the opponent, however, the nature of the weapons made sense, so they had to fall back on their melee martial arts training and sharpshooting to make the most of these pruners and portable sprayers.

The Thorn Soldiers raised their thorn-swords and marched forward, looking like an enormous, dangerous, moving hedge, hoping that their combined weight and force, coupled with their weapons, would, literally, drive them into the ground. The police and the gang had no choice, but to raise weapons and charge into the swell.

Both forces rammed into each other, with the humans taking the worse of the charge, getting slammed back and tumbling onto the ground, as if they ran, full-tilt, at a copse of trees.

They all got back to their feet and, frantically, switched tactics. Mob rules, every man, boy, and girl for themselves, as they, also, covered each other, when the opportunity presented itself.

The police and the gang split up and tried to use their greater speed and maneuverability to flank and surround the Soldiers in some grand, improvised Pincer Movement.

By dint of their numbers, they managed to succeed, but by doing so, they wound up falling for the Soldiers' trap, by getting outflanked by the outer ring of even faster Herb Hounds, who were waiting in the wings to encircle the humans.

Now, the fighters faced a fearful, desperate battle on two fronts, either focusing their melee fights on the Soldiers, or turning to slash at the Hounds, who sought every opportunity, as a pack, to swarm them from behind.

Marcie, carrying a sprayer, brandished the nozzle in one hand and an Insta-Ice capsule in the other, while she dutifully covered fellow sprayer, Velma.

Her idea, which seemed to have some effect, was to throw the capsule on the concrete ground in front of a Soldier or approaching Hound, and let the solution splash on their lower extremities, freezing them so they couldn't move, and thus, were easier prey to her gun.

Jason, however, with sprayer in hand, looked more like a nervous lawn sprinkler, twisting and turning to spray anything that looked the least bit threatening, but a dire thought intruded upon him. By trying to shoot at everything, he was wasting precious weed killer. A real tactic had to be implemented in the middle of all of this non-productive chaos.

After driving a Soldier away, he jogged over to Sheriff Stone, who had just managed to slash off the head of another Soldier, and whispered into his ear, when the man had a moment.

Stone turned and bellowed into the noise of battle. "Men! New plan! Pruners, face the plant-men! Sprayers, cover the pruners, and attack the dog-things!"

Officers and teens rushed to restructure their positions, giving the Thorn Soldiers pause.

Then, the pruners began to slash at the defensive Soldiers' heads, once again, but with more purpose, now that someone was watching their backs.

Herb Hounds, seeing their partners getting driven back, tried to run past the Sprayers to help, but only had gouts of herbicide blasted into their muzzles, driving them off, where they wilted and, soon, died.

Eventually, the number of plant creatures started to dwindle, as this wasn't the full host of the small army that Greenman had spawned the night before. With the Herb Hounds cowed or decimated, fighting concentrated on the Thorn Soldiers, with fallen, decapitated ones littering the courtyard, like debris after a hurricane.

None of the human fighters noticed that their defeated foes were now sporting one less arm than before.

"Keep up the pressure!" Stone commanded. "We've got 'em, now!"

"Sheriff, look!" Bucky yelled, pointing behind Stone and most of the other deputies and teens.

They all turned to see new Thorn Soldiers coming out of the upturned earth of the ruined, nearby landscaping.

"Oh, yeah," the sheriff muttered to himself. "I forgot that they could do that."

As the reinforcements shook the dirt from their new bodies and approached, he called out, "Men, form up on me!"

A deputy yelled, "Sir, I'm almost out of weed killer!" That was joined by other warning cries of weed killer depletion.

"Stone!" Red called out. "Let some of the deputies go get more weed killer, while we hold these guys off!"

"That's _Sheriff_ Stone, to you! But, you've got a good idea," he admitted, before turning to the rest of the fighters.

"Okay, two of you go get more ammo!" he directed two of the deputies. "The rest of you sprayers, listen up! When these things die, a part of their bodies break off and become new creatures. If you see that happening, spray whatever you got left at the body part. Don't let it grow!"

"Yes, sir!" all the sprayers yelled out.

Without preamble, weary, pruner-armed citizens and law enforcement joined in battle with the new wave of Thorn Soldiers and the remaining, emboldened Herb Hounds, while the sprayers waited for their chance to kill the ones yet to come.

* * *

Anxious security guards, interns, doctors, and nurses stopped in the course of their rounds to watch the turmoil of the battle raging just across the walkway and courtyard.

Security had long turned off the automatic glass doors to keep their leafy captors from entering the building, but even before the fighting, the plant creatures had made no overtures in storming the interior. After enough time had passed, it was strongly assumed that their presence was just to make sure no staff members or patients had left.

Just then, a bespectacled girl, favoring her midsection, managed to slip behind the chaos and make it to the doors.

A guard rushed over to the doors' controls, and let them open for her, before a Thorn Soldier could turn around and notice the charitable act.

"What were you doing out there?" asked the guard. "Are you all right?"

Velma, looking pained and doubled over, thanked the guard, and then, staggered up to the receptionist's desk, where a doctor regarded her stooped condition with concern.

"How did you get past them?" the physician asked. "Did those things hurt you?"

Velma shook her head. "No, I'm fine. They were too busy to notice me. I know from the news that you have an epidemic running through the hospital, but did anything strange happen, before then?"

"Not that we know of, but a tall man came by about an hour or two before those monsters showed up, and said that we should call the news because we were going to make headlines. I guess he was right about that," said the doctor, shrugging.

"Okay, I've got just one more question to ask."

"What is it?"

"Where's the bathroom?" Velma asked, leaning a little more forward in her private fight for bodily control.

"Down the hall and to the right," the receptionist chimed in.

"Thanks!"

Hurrying from the stall, Velma rushed to the sink to wash her hands. She knew that every moment she wasn't out on the courtyard giving her support in the fight was another chance of failure for her friends and the police, but she was brought up too well to break such healthy habits, so she endeavored to only rinse her hands, instead.

Absently, she mused about how good the bathroom's ventilation was, and gave a glance to the vent sitting on a high corner of a nearby wall. Immediately, her orderly mind gave a hiccup of incredulity. Something about it was off to her.

Carefully, Velma stepped upon the smooth sink nearest the wall, gathered her balance, and then, leaned across to the grate. The ventilation grill had its slats facing _up_ , instead of down, telling her that it had been installed up-side down.

Peering closer, she saw that the head of one of the screws that had been painted over with the rest of the grill, had that paint torn from the bottom of that head, and the screw, itself, was inserted at a crooked angle. The grate was replaced in haste.

"Who'd want to fiddle with the ventilation?" Velma pondered. "It could just be maintenance, or maybe..."

She climbed off of the sink and quietly opened the bathroom door, looking out from her limited point of view in the doorway. There were a few nurses and a doctor or two walking through the hall, but more importantly, there wasn't a guard anywhere in the corridor.

Velma waited until the staff cleared the hallway, and then, she slipped out of the restroom, to search for another door in the immediate ground floor area.

With most of the people by the entrance still watching the battle outside, she took the opportunity to move further into the hospital's interior to find it.

Sauntering past staff, Velma decided that the door had to be situated centrally in the building, and so, she turned a corner that led to an elevator lobby, and on the other side of the passage was the door she sought. A metal door with the word 'Basement' stenciled on it.

She grasped the handle, hoped that it didn't set off an alarm, and then, stepped through.

* * *

Velma felt more like the fictional Dante, as she descended from one landing to the next, on her way to the sub-basement. On the wall of a level below her, were stenciled the letters HVAC, goading her to reach it.

She opened the door to find a large, noisy chamber walled with fans and huge conduits, generators and electrical equipment, monitoring computer consoles...and bodies on the cold, concrete floor.

Velma felt hesitant to walk any further into what looked like a crime scene, but in spite of the hum of machinery, she heard a faint groan come from one of the HVAC operators.

She rushed to him, helping him to turn over, so he could breathe better. After catching his breath, he came to ask, "What are you doing down here?"

"I wanted to see if there was anything in the ventilation system that's making the people sick," she explained, honestly.

The worker's eyes widened at the word 'ventilation.' "You have to leave! There's something in here! It came out and attacked us, when one of us heard something moving in one of the ducts!"

Velma looked around. The distracting noise of the place meant that she could only rely on her sight to watch out for this thing the man warned her about, so she forced herself to scan for any corner, any shadow, any detail out of the ordinary, which proved difficult, since this was her first time in this setting.

Off to a low corner, she saw a vent with its grill removed. Since it was done without damage, she surmised that it was the grate that one of the workers opened to investigate before the attack.

Then, a furtive movement from an operations console made Velma turn to see the impossible, a disembodied human arm crawling along it.

Velma then noticed an open tool box, nearby, and ran for it. She grabbed a large wrench in time to see the arm react to her presence, and catapult itself towards her, with sprung fingers.

She gasped at the distance it quickly covered from the launch, stepped back to adjust her swing, and batted the weighty arm from the air, with a grunt.

The appendage hit a wall near some generators, rolled over and used its fingers to drag the rest of the limb behind the power plants, using them as cover.

"You have to get out of here," the worker said, weakly.

"That thing is a clue," Velma argued, not seeing the arm creep up the curved side of a conduit, behind her. "Besides, I can't leave you, here."

The man, suddenly, noticed the movement, and pointed to the arm, as its fingers flexed for another launch.

"Look out!"

Velma turned to the general direction, behind her, but it was already in the air, and the arm's flight was too fast for her to react to. With a clumsy, hasty swing, she missed the incoming limb, as it bore its hand for her collared neck.

By reaction, she dropped the wrench to catch the arm by its strong, flexing wrist, but her fear to avoid its grasp made her back away, and then, stumble to the floor, still fighting to keep the hand from coming down to her throat, which it, slowly, began to do, by hard-fought inches.

Velma squeaked when she felt murderous fingers reach inside her sweater's collar, and brush eagerly against the skin of her throat. Then, as a change in tactic, a port in the center of its palm opened, allowing a clear mist to wisp out, as its hand now angled to grasp her face, instead.

Its fingers clenched in programmed desire to lock its palm tight against her mouth and nose and showed no signs of stopping. Velma, who was already going on pure adrenaline and terror, had no idea on how to destroy it, even if she managed to keep it from killing her.

A shadow fell across her and her struggle with the arm, as a woman's hand clamped down onto the forearm of the limb, and the other grabbed its wrist from the back.

"Okay, I got it!" she called out to another figure approaching them.

"I got you covered!" said the other figure, a male. "Throw it!"

The woman snatched the arm from Velma's desperate hold, and as it fought to free itself, the woman pitched the appendage into a far corner.

It rolled to right itself onto its fingers for another run, but then, a bullet tore through its thick forearm. The force of the shot flipped it over, spouting a cloud of clear steam from the bullet hole.

Surviving processors understood that it was still under attack, and continued to try and counter-attack, turning over, once again, this time, with more difficulty, and raising its fingers to pull it along for a suicide charge.

A barrage of bullets from the two security guards' service revolvers perforated the limb, and blew it into smoking, twitching pieces.

The woman guard helped Velma up and asked, "What are you doing down here? Cameras caught you coming down."

"There's something in the hospital...in the vents...that's making people sick," Velma explained between gasps of air. "That arm might have something to do with it. It tried to gas me."

"Radio it in," she told her partner. "And call some EMT's down here, too."

"One arm couldn't possibly make the whole hospital sick," Velma reasoned. "There's got to be more of them in the vents. Tell the staff that they have to open every window in the place. We've got to air it out, completely."

"You got it, but how do we deal with these arm things?"

"They're robotic," Velma said. "If it's not too late, there's a patient, admitted here, who might be able to help."

With that, Velma wearily walked over to the recovering worker, and helped him to his wobbly feet.

"I know this may be asking a lot of you, right now, sir," she told him, as she walked him over to an unmanned console. "But, I was wondering if you could...hit _exhaust_ on this whole building?"

"I might," he admitted, feebly. "But, I'll need some help."

"Hey, I'm not going anywhere."

* * *

An Herb Hound rounded Daisy, after Red dispatched the Thorn Soldier that partnered it, losing his pruner from his hands in the process, when its teeth became stuck in the creature's neck stump, when it fell over.

The Hound scrambled and leaped up at a surprised Daisy, but instead of landing upon her and tearing through her, Red rammed his bulk into the beast, forcing it and him to fall to the ground.

"Red!" she yelled.

A terrifying tussle ensued where Red could only try to bear his weight down on the most flexible parts of the Hound he could find, in an attempt to break it, while the beast twisted, so its claws and teeth could find purchase in his body.

With a quick, fortuitous turn, the Hound managed to free itself from Red's grasp, faced him, and then, sank its thorn teeth into Red's shoulder, shaking its head to saw deeper into the flesh and force the teen on his back.

A yelling Red, held his ground, and then, held the Hound around its neck in an enraged bear hug, then he twisted his body and wrapped a leg around the creature's frame to gain more leverage, as he poured more strength and focus into the hug at the base of the neck, and drove his bleeding shoulder up against the bite to force the beast's head back, further and further...

There was a sudden crack near the beast's shoulders, as the flexible, wooden neck, finally, snapped at the base under the irresistible pull of the chokehold, and the extreme backward angle that the head was placed.

Red and the beast fell over, and only when she didn't think the creature would move any more, did Daisy run to an injured and tired Red.

"Why did you do that, Red?" she fretted, putting her hand over his shoulder wound to stop its flow. "I still had some weed killer in my tank, you dumb-dumb!"

"Spot was coming for you...and I guess I didn't think," he admitted, catching his breath. "Heck, you'd have to water me...like begonias, from all the dumb things...I've done before."

Her answer for his self-deprecation was to hug him. "Oh, stop it, Red. You've got a good head on your shoulders, and you know it. Besides, I happen like begonias, and you don't have to have brains to be beautiful."

"Hey, who are you callin' beautiful?" Red asked, wearily, in mock-challenge.

Daisy faced him and told him, squarely, "You, dumb-dumb." Then, she kissed him, gratefully, deeply, and then, he eagerly did the same.

* * *

The last of Marcie's herbicidal stream trickled upon the browning bulb-arm that tried to escape, its drying tendrils curling in its death throes.

All around the courtyard and walkway, friends and police stood in fatigued triumph over the remains of the felled Thorn Soldiers and Herb Hounds, and nothing on, or in the ground, stirred by their feet, as they congratulated themselves and took their collective ease.

A ringtone chimed in Marcie's wool jacket. She let the nozzle swing free to her side, as she reached for her phone.

"Hello."

"Marcie, it's me, Velma," said her friend, on the other end. "Good news! You were right about what was killing the patients. The staff is opening all the windows in the hospital, and I just helped accessed the hospital's environmental system to purge the fumes outdoors! We just saved the hospital!"

Marcie gave a grateful sigh, and had to grin at the level of their combined success. Even better than defeating the plant monsters, the people inside were safe, and would not be the newest victims of Greenman's mad crusade. This was a victory for the history books, even though, ironically, it was a history book that helped them.

"That's my girl!" she crowed. "Come on out, V! I'll be waiting for you!"

* * *

The gang had since departed, leaving the police and the town's tree removal crews to deal with the clean up.

A reporter from the number of news staff that had recorded the battle for posterity, crossed the street and headed for the sheriff, followed by a man hoisting a camera that the reporter glanced over to speak to.

"This is Rob Packman, CCN News! Until a few hours ago, Crystal Cove Hospital was the center of a siege held by a host of incredible plant monsters. But, that was before the heroism of Sheriff Bronson Stone and the brave men and women under his command, finally, broke that siege and freed the hospital. I'm here with the sheriff, himself, fresh from this incredible victory."

He pointed his microphone at a cock-sure Bronson Stone, and asked him, "Sheriff, tell us! How did you manage to destroy these creatures?"

Stone gave a theatrical sigh. "Well, Rob, believe it or not, I dealt with these creatures before, and I knew that the only way to deal with a plant monster is to prune 'em 'till there's nothing left. Yep, when I see a weed, I whack it."

"Stirring words, Sheriff, but what about the teenagers we saw fighting alongside you and your people. What can you tell us about them?"

Stone looked surprised. He didn't expect to be answering questions about those buttinskis, but his ego wanted to spin it, so that their positive presence in the fight was, somehow, his idea.

"Oh, them? They're...uh, just, uh, members of the department's new youth training program," he said, mendaciously. "Local law enforcement likes to train the next crop of fresh talent as early as it can, and I believe that on-the-job training is essential."

"So, the police department isn't worried about possible charges of child endangerment, then?" Packman asked, training his microphone in the sheriff's face, as it were a weapon, which in some journalistic respects, it was.

Stone visibly frowned. Now, that his egotism backfired on him, his moment in the sun was in jeopardy. When in doubt, he thought. Distance yourself.

"What? Did I say training?" he amended, hastily. "What I meant to say that they're just a bunch of nosey kids who _took it upon themselves_ to interfere in a police matter. It's a good thing we were on hand to save _them_ from the monsters, too. Now, if you'll excuse me, we have some more weeds to whack, and a sheriff's job is never done!"

"A fascinating account, Sheriff. Thank you for-"

A worried Stone leaned over to ask Packman, in a low voice, "Uh, that part about the training thing, that's not on record, is it?"

The reporter gave a self-satisfied stare into his camera. "This is Rob Packman, signing off."

* * *

"Marcie, you have to see your father," Velma said from the passenger seat of the parked Clue Cruiser. "Talk to him. Patch things up."

Marcie slumped in the driver's seat and sighed. "I want to, V, but we were so angry with each other, when I left. I just couldn't understand why he was so mad at me, when _Greenman_ was the one who took the park away from him."

She bowed her head in painful memory, and added, "He said some...really hurtful things to me, and I just had to leave."

Velma reached over and put a supportive hand over Marcie's. "But now, you both had time to let things cool off. He probably wants to talk to you, too, but he might be too proud or ashamed of himself to make that first move. If you do it first, you'll prove to be the bigger woman in this. He'll see how mature you're taking this."

Marcie gave a glance of amazement towards her friend. The weight of her council sounded so solid, so mature in its own right, that it left her little room for doubt of its success.

"Listen to yourself, V," Marcie chuckled, incredulously, feeling a little better for it. "You sound like a school councilor. How do you know so much about things like that?"

Velma gave a knowing smirk. "When you've a teacher, like I was, you learn how to settle disputes between students and their parents, all the time. Now, go in there, Marcie Fleach, and make up with you father, or do I have to give you a time-out?"

"All right, all right, _Miss Dinkley_. I'll go," Marcie acquiesced with a sigh. "Jeez. You might not know this, but you're not a teacher anymore, you know."

"Girl, once a teacher, _always_ a teacher. Now, go!" Velma said, ending with her pointing past Marcie to the house she parked in front of.

Glumly, Marcie stepped out of her car and walked with uncertainty up the walkway to her old home. Despite all of the adventures she had away from it, she needed the solace that only the familiarity of home could give her.

She approached the front door. If Winslow wasn't out shopping or socializing, then there was a good chance that he was at home, at least, that was what she hoped, as she raised her fist to knock on the door.

Her knuckles rapped on the door with enough force to be heard from inside, but the force pushed the door open, instead, making Marcie's innards chill with concern.

Stepping into the foyer, that concern was justified when she saw furniture, overturned and out of place, drapes hanging half-torn from their rods, and broken bric-a-brac littered across the floor.

"Dad!" Marcie called out into the silent house.

A moment later, the front door opened to admit Velma, who saw the mess of the house, and walked over to Marcie, worried.

"Did you call me?" she asked. "What happened?"

"I don't know. I just came in and the place was like this. I'm going upstairs. Could you check down here for me?"

"Yeah."

Marcie ran up the staircase, calling out for her father, checking every room, and even climbing up into the attic for him, but there was no one.

She walked back down the stairs, a pall of dread hanging over her, like overcast. She returned to the living room/foyer area, where she saw Velma waiting for her.

"Did you find anyone?" Marcie asked, unable to hide the fear in her voice.

Velma shook her head. "There was no one down here." Then, she handed her a folded letter with Marcie's name written on it, for her to take. "I saw this taped to the back of the front door. It's for you."

Marcie unfolded it. It was a simple message, but it, clearly, held the greatest of import to her.

"For my book and your interference," the note, ominously, read.

"Greenman," she whispered, crushing the letter. This war between them was far from over, and it claimed yet another soul on the scoreboard of people that she and the gang couldn't protect. "He's got my father, V."

Velma could only feel for her friend, feeling, ironically, blessed that her own family wasn't accosted, but she didn't want to upset Marcie with expected platitudes and empty words of comfort. So, she quietly walked up behind the grieving girl and held her. It was a gesture that proved far better than words, for the both of them.

The moment was then interrupted by the front door opening, once again, this time with two men in dark business suits filling the doorway and casting shadows on the two girls.

"Who are you?" Velma asked the intruders.

"Are we addressing Marcie Fleach?" asked the first suited man.

Marcie turned from her worries to face the men. " _I'm_ Marcie Fleach. Who wants to know?"

"We're from Creationex. We were sent to bring you there. An important matter has come up, and you have been recommended at the highest levels of the company to handle it. Please, come with us."

Marcie gave a sad look around her violated home. There was no reason to stay. Her father was out there, alive, she hoped, and, strangely enough, these men's impromptu arrival was just the thing to momentarily shake her out of her despair. Somebody needed her. That was enough.

"C'mon, V. Let's see what they want," she said, as the two girls prepared to leave the foyer. The voice of one of the men stopped them in their tracks.

"Wait," he said, shaking his head. "Our representative only asked for you, Miss Fleach. I'm afraid that your friend can't come with us."

With a wintry look that was begat of fatigue, familial worry, and just plain insult, Marcie bore it down on the two men in the doorway.

"Look, you. My friend and I have had a very busy day trying to stop a madman, only to find out that said madman has kidnapped my father. Now, you two come out of nowhere, and tell me that some high muckety-muck from Creationex wants to see me, and I can't bring my friend along? Now, I like the company, but the way I see it is this, either she comes with me, or your boss can just manage _without_ me. Understood?"

The two men in the threshold seemed to have a wordless conference for all of a few seconds of deliberation. Then, the first man, finally, said, "Fine. She can come with you."

As the two men parted to allow the girls to leave the stricken house, Marcie muttered under her breath, bitterly, "I thought so."


	5. Chapter 5

They walked through a beautiful steel and glass corridor, the highest in Creationex's main corporate building that led to the President's office. Marcie gave a glance at the awesome view afforded her from the windows that stretched before her, and wished that she was in a better mood to enjoy it.

"This is so cool!" Velma gushed. "Look how high up we are, Marcie! Can you imagine that this was all started by two kids in high school with a dream? Every floor, every invention, every patent is a lasting testament to their hard work and love for each other, over the years. It's so amazing. It's the Great Corporate American Nerd Romance."

"You softie," Marcie smirked.

"You scoff, but ever since I first picked up a motherboard, I heard about Creationex. I always wondered what it would be like to work here, adding my brains to help shape the future, and get paid pretty well in the process, especially in their computer division. Maybe, I could start my own company. _Dinkley's Digital Designs_. How do you like it?"

"Not bad. I think I might want to start my own business, someday, too. _Fleach's Future Foundry,_ so we share a fondness for alliteration, at any rate. I can't lie, though. I thought the same thing, all the time. In fact, this is my second time coming here."

"Really? When was the first?"

"On a school field trip, earlier this year. You weren't here, but I wish you were. We could have geeked out together."

"Softie," Velma smirked back.

Marcie had to chuckle at that. Despite her troubles, being with Velma again was like an elixir. It felt so easy to be herself around her, so comfortable. She made her laugh inside and out, made her shape up, when she didn't think it was possible. When people talked about chemistry with another person, she knew what they meant even as a kid, but never thought that such a thing could be for her. Only Velma could prove her so wrong.

As they approached the high-tech doors that led to the office, she straightened her posture, took a deep breath to clear the worry from her mind, and maintained the notion that as long as she had Velma as her friend, the world became a nicer, less uncertain place.

One of their two escorts opened the doors with a touch of a lit panel set by the door frame, and the double doors, smoothly, split apart.

They stepped into a panoramic chamber that was a tasteful fusion of traditional big business office decor, and something from the set of a science-fiction drama series, with sweeping, artistically futuristic, curves of mirror-polished metal and tempered glass platforms, all framed behind the soaring backdrop of a window that spanned the entire width of the already wide room.

However, to the two girls, as they walked further in, something was quite amiss within the room. It was empty.

Or rather, not so much empty, as it was bereft of any other people. However, they could see something sitting by the vast window.

Between the two founders'/presidents' vacant desks, one of which having a single envelope on it, was an elderly parrot with a small, tattered scarf around his neck, sitting on a tall, brass and cedar perch.

From his build and look of aged wisdom still shining from his large, expressive eyes, he seemed more owl than parrot, but the two girls, immediately recognized him, with no small sense of awe, as the goodly spokesman for Creationex, itself, Professor Pericles.

Suppressing the desire to ask for his autograph, Marcie and Velma took obsequious steps towards practically the public face of the company, while the bird calmly watched them.

Deciding to show her respect for their host by speaking his native German, she had long wondered what he would say to her, if they ever met, at this momentous occasion, something joyous, perhaps a rare pearl of wisdom for the up-and-coming scientist with a dream in her heart.

When they both stopped at what seemed a respectable distance from him, Pericles settled more comfortably on his perch and regarded Marcie, amicably.

"Ah, Guten Tag, Fraulein Weinerwasser." (Ah! Good day, Miss Hot Dog Water.)

She did not, in retrospect, expect to hear that.

"Weinerwasser? Ach!" Marcie soured, dreading that she would never be rid of that accursed moniker. "Wer hat dir gesagt, dass war mein Name?" (Who told you that was my name?") she asked in annoyance.

The parrot shrugged. "Ich hatte die Firma in Kontakt mit Ihrer Schule, um Sie zu finden. Einer der Studentenstudenten wusste fast nicht, wer du warst, bis sie sich endlich erinnerte und dich mit diesem Namen anrief. Unnötig zu sagen, sie war keine Hilfe." (I had the company contact your school to find you. One of the principal's staff almost didn't know who you were until she, finally, remembered, and called you by that name. Needless to say, she was no help.)

Marcie just sighed, wanting to move on. "Rufen Sie mich einfach an Marcie, Professor." (Just call me Marcie, Professor. Okay?)

Pericles nodded. It didn't take a bird with a genius I.Q. to see that she took umbrage in that name. "Ja. Tut mir leid, Marcie. (Yes. I'm sorry, Marcie.)

He then, smoothly, switched languages. "May we speak in English? It would seem rude to leave you friend out of the conversation, and I wouldn't want any of my eleven languages to get rusty."

"Thanks. What's up?"

"As you probably know, the police are far too busy dealing with public disturbance calls, vandalism, theft, and recently, kidnappings," Pericles said. "However, I have also heard that you have been cultivating a reputation as something of an amateur detective around town. It is because of this reputation that I have called you here, today. I need you for a very important case, perhaps, the most important one of your life."

"Creationex wants me, I mean... _us_ , to solve a case for them?" Marcie asked, unbelieving.

She didn't even realize how big her eyes were widening over this. Money was never a consideration, it was just intellectually challenging and, admittedly, fun to outwit those who would use crime to inconvenience others, she found. But, this was on a whole new level. Being recommended by a global powerhouse of a company went light-years into proving that this hobby had some serious legs on it, and would force people to take these kids seriously, from now on.

"We do," Pericles said. "We know about what you did during your field trip, months ago, when you stopped that corporate spy from stealing from us. It was your sharp mind, quick thinking, and brilliant inventions that had impressed us, Marcie. Will you use those skills to help us, once again?"

Marcie looked visibly torn from indecision. This was an opportunity to show their mettle that might never come again. For someone like her, who wanted people to know her qualities, through hard work and successes, this was anathema to her. She wanted nothing more than to accept, but time and fate were not on her side, here.

Something Velma could see in her conflicted eyes from where she stood.

"Is something wrong, Miss Fleach?" the parrot asked.

"Professor," Velma said in regretful tones. "It's not that she doesn't want to take the case. I think I speak for her, when I say that it would have been a great honor, but she... _we're_ quite busy with another case, at the moment. The fact that there have been so many crimes going on in town is because of a man named Greenman. What he's doing is causing all of this unrest, to begin with, and we're in the process of stopping it."

"V's right, Professor," Marcie spoke up, again. "I want to take your case, but it's just bad timing, right now. If we manage to stop Greenman, then I promise to get right on it, when we're done."

The feathers on Pericles' body fluffed and ruffled in sudden agitation, and a stricken look of loss, anguish, and even fear, was reflected in his green eyes.

" _Nein! You must!_ " he shouted, more at the situation than to the surprised girls. Seeing the worry on his guests' faces, he knew that he caused this disruption. He let his emotions hold sway on his decorum, and amends had to be made.

"I...I am sorry, mein kinder," he gasped. "I was wrong to snap at you. You are not the cause of what...happened." A tear escaped from his eye before he could wipe it away with a wing.

"What's wrong, Professor?" Marcie asked. "What happened?"

Pericles grimaced, as if merely bringing it up was painful, or would jinx any chance for a positive resolution, but he carried his anxiety with maturity, and whispered, "The Owenses are gone. They didn't come to work, yesterday, and they never came home!"

The bird hopped from the perch over to one of the desks, where the blank envelope lay. "Someone called the office, yesterday, telling me that Ricky and Cassidy were taken, and that I was not to call the police or hire private investigators. I was only to convince you to find them for me, after I contacted you. I was also told to expect a letter, and that I should give it to you, once you decided to help."

Marcie went over to the desk and took out the letter, already having a very good idea who sent it.

_"The bird has, no doubt, summoned you, since the police have been completely flummoxed by me,"_ the note read. _"As you may have realized, time has been my ally. Nothing I have done had been left to chance. Every day, in some way, has been a cog in the great machinery that is my crusade, and that great work hinges on a timetable of my own devising._

_"Since I know that you have done your utmost to foil me, at almost every turn, and survived to tell the tale, know this. The hour is coming when I will complete a mission that had been centuries in the doing, and I would very much like to see you, today, where we first met, to mark the occasion. Your father and Mr. and Mrs. Owens have already received their invitations, and now, you've just read yours._

_"We're waiting."_

Marcie said, quietly, "As busy as he's been, he wants to see me, today? I have to admit. He knows how to handle time management."

"That they were kidnapped for a huge ransom is bad enough," Pericles fretfully added. "But, even worse, _Cassidy is with child!_ Twins! The whole family... _my whole family_...is in danger!"

Velma glanced at Marcie, not believing in the sheer coincidence of so many kidnappings happening so close to each other.

"You don't think it's..."

"It's him, all right," Marcie muttered with a nod.

She turned to Professor Pericles, filled with the sober conviction of someone who only now understood the depths her enemy was willing to go to achieve his misguided ends, that no one, anywhere, was too precious to sacrifice, and, in the pit of her stomach, sacrifice, she knew, was indeed, the name of the game.

"Sir, believe it or not, but my family was kidnapped, too," Marcie told him. "The person who did it is the same one who took the Owenses, the same one we're after, Everest Greenman, and I can tell you from experience that if he says that he won't hurt them, if we do what he says, then he's lying by omission, and it will all end in tears, whether we comply or not, which is why we'll help you."

The parrot's features softened, and his feathers began to flatten, as his concerns and fear for his human loved ones became somewhat more manageable.

"Danke. Danke schoen, Miss Fleach. Miss Dinkley," he breathed, gratefully. "If you need anything to help with the case, as acting president of Creationex, the whole of this company's resources are yours."

"Thank you, Professor," Velma said, as both girls nodded respectfully. She then said to Marcie, "Let's go." and they both stepped away, heading for the doors.

"Don't worry, Professor," Marcie said, evenly, before they left with the waiting escorts. "We'll bring them back before the baby shower."

With the guests, finally, gone, the office was soon quiet, again, and Professor Pericles ascended to his perch, to look out at the vista of Crystal Cove from the vast window, and wrestle with his deep and worrisome thoughts.

* * *

"You can see that it's a trap, don't you?" Velma asked, opening the front door of her house.

"As clear as day," Marcie replied, as they entered. "But, at least, I know where he wants me and, luckily, it's very familiar territory."

"Where is it?"

"He said that he wanted me to go where he and I first met. We met at the amusement park," explained Marcie.

"Then, chances are his third and final sacrifice will be there, and will probably involve your father and the Owenses," Velma reasoned. "What are you going to do?"

Marcie smiled, slyly. "Well, when a so-called emperor invites me to meet with him, I simple must dress for the occasion."

Velma wasn't sure how to take that, at first. Was it a joke? If so, she didn't, immediately, get it. That was, until she thought about what Marcie had said about dressing up, and a strange leap in logic occurred.

"Wait a minute!" Velma exclaimed. "You mean that Halloween costume I saw in the basement, when I came back home? That thing's yours? I thought it was part of one of Mom's conspiracy theories."

"Yep and nope," Marcie said, proudly. "I managed to make enough Super Helium to completely fill the suit, and, although this isn't her maiden voyage, this will be _my_ first chance to fly it, if I don't crash and burn, but I don't think Super Helium burns, though, so I should be fine."

Marcie led Velma down the tidy cellar, where the still figure of a wild-haired she-demon stood on her stand, in a corner of the room.

Velma walked up to it and gave it a more appraising eye, noticing the snug bandeau against the bosom, the tattered loin cloth that just barely covered her femininity, her ample hips and derriere, the alluring, leather-banded gloves that reached up to her strong shoulders, and the boots that ascended the long, slim legs.

"Hmm, so you're going to put that on, huh?" she asked, her mind, casually, running near-salacious images, in multiple angles, of nerdy Marcie strutting around, looking like some winged, wild-maned Amazon, preparing to carry her off to some faraway aerie. "You'll look pretty pervy...I mean _curvy_!"

Ignoring, or not noticing Velma's Freudian slip and covered, reddening face, Marcie pointed out, "Well, according to the other Marcie's journal, her curves are where the bladders for the Super Helium are located. She designed her quite well, from the scraps of her first costume, a manticore, even though the rest of her high-tech components were borrowed from Mr. E's Destroido company. She wrote that 'Dark Lilith,'-"

"Dark Lilith?"

"That what she called her suit," Marcie explained. "Anyway, she said that it was powered by her body heat, with thermal filaments woven into the body, that cooled her and transferred the heat to transducers, which turn it into electricity to power the suit's functions, like the Super Helium micro-pumps in the boots, emergency glide motors for the wings, and feedback control of the myo-boost inner layer, underneath the nano-mail skin, that increased overall strength."

"She wrote that she had a hoot throwing Fred around, like a sock puppet," she added with a chuckle. Then, her face fell a little, as she, accidentally, reminded herself of the native Fred and the rest of Velma's friends.

It was a look that was easy for Velma to catch. "Marcie, what's wrong?"

Her friend sighed, not wanting to hide her feelings, right now. "I'm...just afraid."

"Of what?"

Marcie glanced at Velma. "I know I sound really cocky thinking that we might see our way through this, but if we do, once this is over, things will probably go back to the way they were."

Velma looked puzzled. "What do you mean?"

"C'mon, V. You know that I was never cut out to be one of the gang. I never had anything in common with any of them, and I always knew I was tolerated only because _you_ knew me. Whenever you were with them, I always felt like I was an outsider."

"Well, you could've said something, you know?" Velma said. "Why didn't you talk to me about it? You're my best friend. I thought we shared things together.

"It's _because_ you're my best friend, that I didn't want to say anything," Marcie admitted. "I didn't want you thinking that you had to choose them over me."

Velma shook her head. "Oh, Marcie."

"Okay, I was jealous. I still _am_ , but I know that it wouldn't be fair for you to stop seeing them," Marcie said, feeling like a chastised, little troublemaker, under Velma's slightly reproachful gaze.

"Y'know, Marcie," Velma admonished. "For someone with such a high I.Q., you can be really dense, sometimes. You're my best friend, you dope! That will never change between us."

Marcie found herself giving a self-deprecating smirk, feeling the fool for thinking so little of their bond. "Thanks, V."

"Your welcome. Now, what else do we have to do?"

"Actually, you did plenty," Marcie told her, while she gave the suit another casual glance of inspection, mentally preparing to don it, for the first time. "You can go rest, now. I know that you've been in stasis a long time."

Marcie thought appreciation and gratitude would come from Velma, but what she got was a haughty, hands-on-hips stance of indignation, instead.

"Meaning what, that I can't keep helping you out?" Velma asked, huffily.

"I...don't want you to, V." Marcie wished that the conversation wouldn't go in this direction.

"And why not?"

"Because, I've got it under control. Greenman's failed in two of his last two sacrifices. If I can stop him, then I think I can make Greenman give the amusement park back to Dad."

"I didn't know that you were an optometrist," Velma jested, sternly. "Because, I keep hearing the word "I" from you. You don't have to do this alone, you know?"

"I've got the rest of the gang to help me," Marcie stated.

"I mean me."

"No way."

"What do you mean, 'no way'? You'll need all the help you can get!" Velma countered. "Unless you forgot about what I did with those robots in the stadium."

"I don't need your help!" Marcie wanted to say, more sedately, but it came out as, unexpectedly, loud as Velma's rebuttal.

Annoyed, Velma rolled her eyes, and paced around the basement. "Ugh! Typical Marcie Fleach! You're so stubborn! You never wanted anybody's help. Even when we were science partners, you were always a workaholic! Always trying to prove to the world that you could do it on your own!"

"Some people like to work hard, Velma!" Marcie fumed.

"Oh, and I _didn't_?"

"It's not a crime to try to be the best at something, you know? Besides, I seem to recall you sounding a little like that, Miss Co-winner of the Tri-State Olympiad of Science, three years running. You were just as gung-ho as I am. _Remember?_ " Marcie snapped.

Velma, realizing that this shouting match wasn't going to get her point across, took a calm breath and said, "I do, Marcie, but I've been stuck in the past for months, thinking that I'd never see home, again. That, kind of, put things in perspective for me."

Marcie decided to stay on her tirade. Her break-up with her father, now leading to the possibility that she might never see him, again, took hold, and she wanted to win the argument, for victory and catharsis' sake.

"I talked people into helping me hi-jack a time machine, to bring you back home, for Heidegger's sake, and instead of being happy, you're _psychoanalyzing_ me?"

"I _am_ happy, Marcie," Velma raised her voice, defensively. "But, you're not, obviously, and I know that because you're hiding, again."

That gave Marcie pause. What did she mean? "Hiding? From what?"

"Not _from_ what," Velma pressured, needing to pour some ice water on Marcie's bull-headedness. " _Behind_ what. Behind your work, behind everything you do. Every time things got hard for you, you'd bury yourself in whatever you were doing. You did it when your parents broke up, whenever you were bullied at school. You'd come over to my house because you needed someone to listen, to care. I did, Marcie. I still do, but being the best won't really help you when times get tough. You need _people_ around you, or you'll be so busy that you'll miss out on some of the best things in life... like me."

Those impassioned words, like a chisel of truth, began their work of cutting through the concrete wall of Marcie's long-held defenses, her mastered, habitual mechanisms of coping, which may have been doing her more harm than good.

Yes, it was a fight, a rare thing between the two of them. But in this harsh environment, honesty could come full bloom, and in her remembrance of their friendship, Marcie was reminded that this was an occasional and necessary pain to bear to help each other and strengthen that friendship.

"You did enough for me," she confessed, finally. "I don't...want to be the reason..."

"The reason for what?" Velma pressed, seeing the light at the end of this awkward tunnel.

"That you might get hurt."

"What?" Velma found herself asking. It sounded so strange to hear from Marcie that she had to know why she thought it.

"I don't want to be the reason why you get hurt," Marcie repeated. "I made some enemies, while you were gone."

Velma almost wanted to laugh, but thought better of treating her friend's concern so lightly. "What's the matter?" she asked, in a mock-swagger. "Don't think I'm tough enough to handle it?"

"I don't want to take that chance. In another life, another Marcie Fleach died protecting her Velma Dinkley. I can't think of a better reason, but I don't want you to be in that kind of situation to start with."

The tragic thought of that, suddenly, moved Velma. The notion that concepts like that kind of loyalty, or even love, could truly transcend realities, profoundly, brought home Marcie's worry, and took the flippancy from her.

"I think understand what you're saying, Marcie," Velma said, soberly. "But, I'd certainly appreciate it more, if you treated me like a friend, and not some butterfly. I survived the Old West, after all. Maybe, I'll protect you."

Her fingers found, stroked, and intertwined with Marcie's soft, reciprocating ones. The tender contact, alone, spoke so much, of precious time lost, and hopeful promises of things to come.

"What I'm saying is, if I can't be for the people that _I_ care about," Velma said to her, softly. "Then, what's the point?"

Marcie's heart cracked, deeply, doubling the affection she had for her. She had to turn away to swipe the tear that rolled down her cheek. " _Now_ , who's being stubborn?"

Velma gave her friend a warm, forgiving smile. "Don't worry. You can be stubborn about everything else, I promise, but I do want to help you, and I'm _going_ to help you, or you'll have more on your plate than just Greenman. Capisce?"

With tensions diffused, Marcie sighed and chuckled. "Okay, V, you win." Then, a thought hit her, something she just began to notice, ever since they reunited. "Hey, you've been winning a _lot_ , lately."

"You're just now noticing?" Velma asked, with a cocky smirk. "Now, c'mon, what's the game plan?"


	6. Chapter 6

It seemed as if the troubles of the prior weeks hadn't even touched the lives of the patrons, who milled about the fairgrounds of Greenman's Garden of Glee, formerly Fleach's Folly Factory, but that wasn't the case.

This was as much a catharsis for the visitors who paid to enter the park, as it was a relief. If it was a legal, socially appropriate, and relatively fat-free solution to getting their minds off of the confusion and the problems of the town, after the world-wide change, then it was a blessing to be had.

Situated in an open space just before the mountain range of the roller-coasters, stood a not-so-new attraction, at this point in time, but one of interest to the park-goers who had sampled every other ride, in the past.

A curiously-designed and exceptionally big tilt-a-whirl sat, constructed of a ring of five, large, fiberglass boulders that looked as though each had a bite taken out of them. Within the seated, hollowed-out space of the boulders' 'excavations,' three to four people could strap themselves, comfortably.

Apparently, the visual appeal to the ride's motif was that of mining, due to the notion that the boulders were carrying cosmetically-exposed veins of gemstones around their girths, as well as sporting, what looked to be, a fat gem set near the top of them.

However, the truly eye-catching part of the ride was what stood on top of it. In the center of the ride's wide, rotating platform was raised the fiberglass mock-up of a stone plateau. That plateau was the personal stage for the visual attraction of the ride, a giant.

Spanning a little over thirty feet tall, the statue of a grim, fairy-tale giant commanded a view of the park's proceedings, hefting a huge boulder over his head, in both hands, as if to hurl it at the unsuspecting.

As the riders, spinning in their seats at variable speeds along the randomly undulating platform, screamed in surprised excitement, the overall theme of Rolling Boulder screamed fantasy, as people would spot a hunched, robed and hooded figure, occasionally, pacing nearby, while young children would point, in curious wonder, at the four Thorn Soldiers that stood around the periphery of the ride.

The patrons, walking by, thought that seeing this dark, mysterious figure was fine fun, as he swept his shadowy hood from one passing group to another, as if searching hard for someone, in particular.

Looking momentarily out of character, the hooded man took a glance at a rather expensive wrist watch. When the time he was waiting for had finally arrived, whether he found his quarry in the crowds or no, he slipped a small remote control device from the voluminous depths of his sleeve.

He walked a fair distance from the tilt-a-whirl, followed closely by the unusually sedate Thorn Soldiers. He then turned to face the ride, and then, pressed a button.

Immediately, the platform and the spinning boulders slowed to a disappointing stop, signaling the riders to disembark. Once they had done so, a second button was pressed, while the man looked up at the giant.

From its crotch to the top of its bald head, and even over it, though the height of the held boulder, the titan split down the middle, as explosive bolts boomed, like fireworks, over the visitors, catching their attention for a moment, before they ran, screaming into a scattering, terrified panic, as the two halves of the statue, ponderously, fell away and crashed to the sides of the ride, clearing the area for yards.

The hooded man turned back to the concerned crowds around him, satisfied that the two sections resting on the ground were not lying across the boulder rides, themselves.

Afraid and perplexed, the throngs didn't know what to make, next, of the object that was standing in the statue's place, now revealed in the bright light of day, after the giant's destruction, although some had the presence of mind to take quick photos from their cell phones.

It was another statue, a crude effigy, leaner, in dimensions, to its host and standing in a similar pose to it, but holding nothing. It looked fragile and flimsy, yet it was, actually, framed in strong, dark woods, and skinned with weaves of wicker.

However, it was the desperate shouts for help that caught the people's attention the most. Sitting in what was the midsection of the statue's hollow torso, were a frightened Ricky Owens, his gravid wife, Cassidy, and a confused and terror-struck Winslow Fleach.

"Hey, what are they doing up there?" one man in the crowd, asked the hooded man, staring a chain reaction of other concerned people starting to move in to, perhaps, climb the structure and free the prisoners. The man in the dark robes had other ideas.

With a raised hand, the unusually sedate Thorn Soldiers assumed more bellicose postures and brandished their weapons.

"Don't be afraid! It's just some guys in suits!" one man reasoned, as he tried to maneuver past one of them, and was quickly proven wrong. The sharp tip of the Soldier's thorn-sword slashed his shirt open and carved a deep line of red along his pectorals.

He backed away, painfully, as another man's head was clutched in the tendrils of another Soldier's bulb-arm, and he was tossed back into the crowd.

The plant creatures regrouped and made a loose ring of defense around the effigy, changing peoples' minds about any more foolish frontal assaults, at the moment.

In the midst of the consternation, someone, a woman standing at the outer edges of the crowd, pointed to something that she thought at first was a large bird. At some point, the bird-thing's daylight silhouette grew, gradually, as it appeared to approach the air space of the park's grounds. It soon became apparent to everyone that whatever new thing was entering the fray, it was not, at all, avian.

An immodestly-dressed, wild-haired demoness with red, black-tipped horns, and dark, taloned wings, alighted to the ground in front of the crowd, standing between them and the strange man, his fighters, and his statue.

The robed man took a defensive step back, and although no one could see under his hood, for the first time since people saw this man, he, genuinely, gave the hesitant body language of someone who didn't know what to make of this new visitor.

He raised his hand, again, signaling for his Soldiers to attack. As they approached her, the demoness took a wary stance, clawed gloves brought up in a combat posture.

Then, her glowing, cat's eyes widened when she saw the true tactic that the mysterious man had employed. The Thorn Soldiers split away from her, and instead, were marching towards the closest members of the crowd.

She leaped over to one, and as the Soldier reacted to her presence and tried to cut her down, she caught the sword in one hand and twisted hard, snapping the weapon in half, and then, stabbing it through the soft, vulnerable bulb head.

As it stumbled and raised its limbs to ease the agony and sensory confusion, the demoness grabbed it by the shoulders and threw it the next Soldier, who moved in on the retreating humans.

The dying body of the one, toppled onto the other, pinning it down long enough for her to fly to it and tear its fleshy head away from its shoulders.

The other two Soldiers stopped their advance, and then, turned to face this creature, swords raised.

The demoness unfolded her broad leather wings and took to the air, swooped upon the pair, and slashed their heads apart with her claws. As she landed, again, the last two creatures collapsed to the ground, bleeding sap from their wounds, copiously.

A shout of "Look out!" came a second too late, as the hooded man ran swiftly behind her and clutched a huge handful of her hair, pulling her head back, with force. The other hand came up, but then, changed into a wooden, dangerous-looking parody of itself, with thorns for claws, dancing ever closer to her scaled, exposed throat.

The people gave a shocked and sad gasp, as the robed figure raked his talons across, endeavoring to rip out her trachea in one savage motion.

Still holding the back of her head, he angled it to see the ruin he made, but there was, strangely, no weight from the dying body, or no heft from the slumping head.

He turned the head around and held up a haunted, eyeless face staring back at him, an empty mask, where, moments before, Marcie had ducked, hard, pulling herself free, at the very last second, only to fall to the ground.

"It's a girl!" someone said, while she straightened her glasses and stood up to face the dark figure. Soon, others murmured their bewilderment upon discovering the identity of their strange savior. They were sincerely grateful that she wasn't hurt, but astonished to find her wearing such an outfit, and being alone, handling herself against this obvious threat.

"Marcie? Is that you?" a flabbergasted Winslow asked from above, once he caught a sight of her getting up from her fall. "What are you doing here, and why are you in that get-up?"

She spared a glance up at the torso cage of the statue and the captives, within. "Dad!" she called up, recognizing the voice, and deeply relieved to know that he was still alive. "Are you all right? Is anyone up there with you?"

"Mr. and Mrs. Owens, from Creationex!" said Winslow. "Call the police, Marcie! Tell them where we are!"

"Oh, I think you'll find that the police are too busy dealing with other problems, at present, but since this masquerade is over, I suppose it's just good manners if I unmask, as well," the man said to her, tossing the captured mask aside, and letting his hood slip back to reveal Everest Greenman.

Greenman spent the seconds looking, quizzically, at the cautious Marcie, unmasked in her suit. "I have your mask, Marcie Fleach. I could keep it as a trophy, but it would look far better with your head in it. Just your head. Out of curiosity, what do you call this persona of yours?"

Marcie thought of just answering, 'Dark Lilith,' but that didn't feel right to her, now. Originally, the suit was made to help promote the cause of evil. But now, it had a new purpose, since she needed its strength and abilities to help defeat an evil and to give honor its creator's memory.

"Lilith," she said, simply.

"Curious. Did you decide to wear that to frighten the fair folk of Crystal Cove, or to better reflect the nature of the young woman within?"

Marcie, grimly, flexed her claws. "You better hope it's the former."

That reply reminded Greenman of what his gods had just warned him about, concerning her being '...cloaked in a she-demon's fury.'

He banished such distracting thoughts and focused on the present situation. "During my preparations, here, I managed to hear news about the hospital. How did you know where my second sacrifice was?"

"You know that we have your history book, and it's a good thing that you wrote down 'water of the king,' in English, and not in Gaelic, or I wouldn't have figured it out," she said. "'Water of the king?' 'King's water?' _'Royal water?'_ Aqua regia.

"It's nitrohydrochloric acid. I'm a chemist, and I know what that stuff will do, if not handled properly, or breathed in. It creates nitric oxide, which causes, spoiler alert, pulmonary edema. That's a pretty specific thing for all of the patients in Crystal Cove Hospital to have, a thing whose main symptom is fluid build-up in the lungs, technically drowning. The second sacrifice.

"But, it takes time for that to happen, so you must have had Dr. Quest make those robot arms, we found, to spread those fumes, for days, before you betrayed him. Oh, by the way, the programmer you forced to help you has already come up with a program to call the arms out of the hospital, to be destroyed."

Understanding the costly mistakes that allowed her to out-maneuver him, he chuckled low, and gave a slow, gracious nod, in acknowledge to her surprising, deductive powers. "Well played, Miss Fleach. Well played."

But, the battle had just started, and he decided to switch tracks, as he paced around her, keeping her at high alert, trying a more psychological approach to rattle her.

"Do you know that we all have a turmoil swirling inside of us?" Greenman asked, breezily. "Dark thoughts about even our closest friends and family that we're either too guarded, or cowardly, to acknowledge. When I met your father, I must confess that I had an...edge in the negotiations."

He held up his now human-looking hand, exposing the palm, and Marcie, from where she was, peered out to see a tiny, sharp spike of wood curving out of the center of it.

"What is that?" she asked.

"A thorn of discord," he said. "I used it when I shook your father's hand, the first time we met. He hardly felt it. One poke, one scratch, would release its sap, a poison that seeks out those dark impulses and thoughts, and brings them to light. All of the things your father said, and did to you, were based on all of the fears, insecurities, and anger that he held deep within himself. He may still love you, but he's only human."

Marcie, and unbeknownst to her, Winslow, stood in revelation at the destructive depths of the war both found themselves in.

"More so than you," she said. "Why did you do it?"

"To drive a wedge between the two of you," he said with a simple smile. "You see, the gods guided me here, and warned me, early on, that you, Marcie Fleach, could somehow, undo everything that I have worked so hard to gain, in my new world. So, with the thorn of discord, I made your father so blinded by his negative emotions, he'd connect that recording of your unwitting betrayal of him, and all the other disappointments in his life, as the true reasons why he lost his park, and then, take it out on you, thus, keeping you too emotionally off-balanced to interfere."

Marcie was struck speechless for a moment, and had to concede to the sheer effectiveness of his long-term mind-game. For Greenman to so cleverly craft her as a weapon to use against her own father was diabolical, and it chilled her.

"But, why do you want the park so bad, in the first place?" she pressed.

"Because of the treasure it hides!" he explained, with grandiose gestures. "I chose this spot and gotten rid of the old ride, for a reason. Passing under your feet are ley lines, paths of great, ancient power, coursing through the Earth, like magical circuitry, and directly underneath your pathetic father's park lies not just one ley line, but a ley line _hub_ , a convergence of their raw, magical energy, concentrated in one point, as they intersect!"

He then gestured at the ride and his wooden statue. "Look around my Wicker Man. Do you see the cars with the gems on top, which surround it? The ride is more than what it appears. Underneath it, are energy collectors, drinking in the ley lines, like taproots through a water table. At my signal, they are going to concentrate that energy and create beams of heat to set my glorious offering to the gods, alight.

"My theocratic power as the people's Undying Pagan Emperor is based on the inevitable exultation of our religion through _me_ , and so, by following my gods' wisdom, I will kill many birds with one mighty stone. I will complete my sacrifice and have my hard-earned vengeance for all to see, I will get rid of you, and afterwards, I will claim the hub's energy for my own, and force this town to be my personal seat of power. As a businessman, I like the efficiency of that. Don't you?"

With that, he raised his remote control, with a flourish, and touched the last button on the device.

Marcie, the captives, and the crowd watched, as the ride's five cars quickly aligned themselves to face the feet of the giant Wicker Man, with the gems, set in the tops of the cars, giving off an alarming glow.

Suddenly, colored beams of power touched the ankles of the effigy, making them smolder at the points of contact, and give birth to puffs of thick, black smoke.

Marcie shifted her stance, preparing to run over to the cars and rend them apart with her new strength, but Greenman, expecting that reaction, reached out and intercepted her, bringing her to the ground with a whipping, backhanded blow.

Satisfied, he casually turned to watch this ritual that had taken him centuries to prepare, while, Marcie, groggily, got back on her feet. Finally, the glowing shins of the statue succumbed to the beams, and became ablaze.

Inside the torso cage, Winslow looked through the rising smoke, saw his only daughter getting bested by Greenman, and, worryingly, called her name.

Realizing that it would take too long to try and fight her way past Greenman to get to the gem cars, Marcie quietly clicked the heels of her boots to activate the Super Helium micro-pumps that inflated the inner pockets of her suit, shook her shoulders to flex open her wings, and launched from behind him.

She arced overhead and circled the flaming Wicker Man, trying to see through the choking miasma for a safe place to tear into the torso, and free everyone, within.

Down below, Greenman gave a sincere growl. "Not this time, girl! You will not cheat me, this time!"

His hands shifted, once more, into clutching, thorned horrors, this time, allowing the change to creep up to his forearms, hardening them into thorny, ivy-laced wood.

As the crowd, fearfully, backed away, the hands shredded his robe, easily, revealing another robe, underneath, one displaying the design and green-gold colors befitting a king.

His coifed hair loosened and became undone, changing its color and physical nature to that of long, soft, flowing ferns, as his sneering face and, indeed, his entire body, under the vestments, became transmuted into a commanding, green-tinted figure of dark, hard, gnarly, and knotted wood, with a splay of thick roots for feet.

A regal growth of thick branches began to grow from his scowling forehead, spreading wide, like the weighty antlers of an alpha stag. The base near the forehead curved thinner branches around the sides of his head, until they formed, like a bosky crown, over long, elfin ears.

Watching Marcie, finally, chance to perch upon the effigy's ribcage and snap her way through it, as a final point to his transformation, two growths of arm-like branches sprang high from his back, which, in turn, started weaving thin plant tissue in between the spaces of the branches, until, Greenman, finally, spread out a mighty pair of leaf-life wings.

Already naturally tall, he now looked, to the dumbstruck people, like an imposing patch of forbidding forest that, suddenly, stood and walked like a man.

As his precious fire quickly licked and climbed up the Wicker Man's legs, on its way to the caged torso, Greenman launched high, in an explosion of winged down-thrust, rocketing up to an unsuspecting Marcie, and violently shoved her off the structure.

Shocked at what she was now facing, she recovered her wits and corrected her tumble, hunching her strength-enhanced shoulders to provide natural wing motion to hover and study him.

"Look at you!" Greenman snarled, accusingly, while perched above the flames, on his creation's high head. "There was a time when you couldn't get away from your father's park fast enough. Now, you risk defending it? Is this the hill you truly want to die on?"

If he was hoping to intimidate Marcie with that last question, it didn't register. All she focused on was the heavy, frightening smell of smoke, the coughing of loved ones and innocents in the air, and the knowledge that only she was here, capable enough to do her damnedest to stop it.

"That's my people, down there, Greenman!" she yelled back, in challenge. "Is Crystal Cove the hill _you_ want to die on?"

His answer was an eager dive, with spread wings and bared claws, down towards her.

As angry determination overcame her reasonable caution of the man, Marcie hunched her strength-enhanced shoulders, sweeping her wings hard, on the downbeat, and blasted from her hover, into a powerful ascent, claw-tipped fingers aiming for his insufferable face.

* * *

In the quiet woods, a small path of ruin lead from where a motorcycle and a sports car were parked in the driveway of Everest Greenman's estate.

The bodies of two decapitated Thorn Soldiers and the remains of their still-born bulb-arm progeny, chopped to pieces and reeking from poured bleach, cluttered the driveway's connecting path to the house. The front door was ajar, breeched by a violently broken lock.

In the located home office, Velma, trying not to sink into the wide, leathery depths of Greenman's office chair, sat in front of his booted-up, desktop computer, while she found a small, sheet of notepad paper next to the keyboard.

She gave the paper a quizzical look, upon which, was drawn a large, strange symbol that looked like a reversed number five, transfixed with a short line through its center, and its bottom curve continuing to loop into a spiral.

She put the mysterious icon out of her mind, and muttered to herself, "I hope you're right about this, Marcie." When the computer asked for a password, and offered a vertical bar to fill in, Velma typed in the words, 'Esus, Teutates, and Taranis,' as one word, with no spaces, before she noticed the rest of the gang entering the room from their individual sojourns.

"You know, for a maniac, he's got surprising taste in antiques," Daisy commented, as she rounded the huge desk. "There's enough good stuff, out there, to start a shop."

Jason and Red approached Velma's side of the desk, as well, Red holding up a hunk of cold roast chicken that he was tearing into, and Jason, digging into a hoagie of his own making.

"Boy, for someone who tried to kill me, he sure knows how to live," Jason replied. "That's not a kitchen, back there, it's a deli! Am I right, Red?"

Red's answer was a food-obstructed mumble, prompting Daisy to tell him, "Red, chew your food, then talk."

"We'll have time to raid his house, like Visigoths, after we take care of this," Velma reminded them, as they gathered behind her, curious about her progress.

She held her breath and tapped the Enter key. The wallpaper of a dappled glade, covered with small folder icons on the upper right corner, appeared on the screen, making Velma give a loud sigh of gratitude.

"Are we in?" asked Jason.

"I think so," Velma said, maneuvering the cursor to click on a folder that struck her fancy: Emperor's Guard.

When she opened it, she saw that it was the same set-up as the wayward programmer's Questoid command override program, just downloaded into this computer.

"This was how Greenman, and later, I, were able to control those robots," Velma explained.

"I'm just glad Stone threw those things in an impound," Red muttered, uneasily.

Velma left the folder's contents and sought out another. There were various others, some detailing plans for how he would rule and maintain conservative, religious policies through propaganda, history, force and fear.

Another had plans, still in development, on how he would seize control of Sundial and use its resources to control time, and eventually, create an earthly, eternal theocracy.

The others read Greenman's scheme, and it made Daisy ask, "Why don't we just go to Sundial, first, and beat him to the punch? We ask the cat if we can just travel back in time, and stop this creep before he did all of this."

"Cause and effect," Velma simply said. "If he was stopped before he had a chance to do anything, then everything that Marcie and you guys did *in response to that, wouldn't have happened either, because there wouldn't have been a need."

"But, Greenman's got to be stopped, now," Jason pressed. "How do we do that _without_ having to go back in time?"

Velma stared at the computer screen, in deep thought. The whole purpose of them being there was to hurt Greenman, while Marcie bought them time, in the park. But now, indecision frustrated her and clouded her thinking. She had his operation by the throat, and she didn't know what to do with it.

She shook her head, left the folder, and returned to the wallpaper. As long as she kept looking at the Sundial scheme, her mind would always gravitate towards it. A new plan of attack was needed.

Her eyes scanned the names of the others folders, one of which read, "Finances."

Out curiosity, she opened it and beheld a long list, documenting the war treasure and plunder that he had laid claim to, and hidden, over the centuries, and the vast, monetary value that booty would now be worth, today.

Above the list was the decidedly, European-sounding name of a bank, and then, a thunderbolt of inspiration flashed through Velma's mind.

"We do that by fixing the problem, in the here and now, guys. I think I have an idea. I'm going on-line to check out this bank's website," she finally, answered.

"Uh, to do what, exactly?" Red asked.

"Greenman sacked and plundered his way into the history books," Velma said, with a sly grin. "I think it's time we plundered _him_ , for a change."

A blue, stylized animated fish splashed, happily, from a blue, stylized wave that graced the monitor's now white screen, once she pressed the key that allowed her to go on-line.

"Welcome to the FintanNet, the electronic gateway to the World-wide Ocean..." a feminine voice greeted her, accompanied by a light, up-beat chime.

"World-wide Ocean? What the heck is that?" Red asked. "I know I'm not computer savvy, but even _I_ know that's not the Internet."

Velma admitted that she was hard-pressed for an answer, until she realized that she was attempting to enter the width and breadth of the _World-wide_ Web. What if that Web's world had changed?

"Of course!" she gasped, as much in frustration, as to self-congratulation, for deducing the problem. "The world's changed! The Internet, as we knew it, is gone, obviously, replaced by this! I guess they consider cyberspace to be an ocean of data."

Then, she fretted. "Whatever this is, I hope I can figure it out, or we're sunk!"


	7. Chapter 7

****

Already making the arrangements to be there, Mayor Nettles and her two-man security detail entered the CCN news studio on the lot at CC Studios, with a certain degree of fanfare, experiencing the complete deference of every manager, director and staff member, therein.

Expected professionalism was on full display, as the facility made every effort to make the mayor's last minute idea, an impassioned speech to calm the emotions of the citizens, or, at least, redirect their nervous energies towards more positive ends, and remind them that they were not panic-stricken criminals, come to successful fruition.

* * *

"What are you doing in there, Red?" Daisy asked from the office.

"Watching TV," he answered from a couch in the living room. "All that computer stuff's already boring. Now, it's so complicated, even Velma can't make any sense outta it."

"I didn't say I couldn't make any sense out of it," Velma defended, under her breath, her pride slightly hurt. "It's just different than what I'm used to, that's all."

Focusing back to the work at hand, she, finally, found the Swiss name of the bank. "Okay, I found the bank. This _Bubble_ search engine's not too shabby," Velma critiqued.

The bank's summoned homepage stated all of the usual amenities of what that institution could do, as Velma swept her gaze over the website's various directories. Finally, she found the Log In button, and stopped cold, before proceeding. What did Greenman ever call himself? What would he deem a worthy password? Her quick mind, quickly, went blank.

"I think I've hit a snag," she admitted. "I can't get access to his account, unless I give them his personal information, and I couldn't even guess what that is."

Another thing that puzzled her was the fact that when she entered the login page, it only had a single, central box to interact with. It didn't seem like a wide text bar that would allow for more than a word or two to be written, it was just a white box with the 'Enter' button below it.

Experimentally, Velma moved the cursor into the box's center, and tried to type her name, but no letters appeared.

"What's this box for?" she pondered in frustration. "What does it do? What does it mean?"

Velma tried not to despair, but nothing was getting done, and worse, Marcie was probably having the fight of her life, and she was letting her down with her failure. Feeling stuck, she rested her head into one of her hands and sighed.

Her breath floated the nearby piece of paper from the desk, and it fluttered to the floor. Daisy, absently, picked it up, and asked her, "Is this your drawing?"

"No," she moaned. "It was there before I got here. It might be Greenman's, but why would he have it next to his computer, I'll never-" She lifted her face from her palm and stiffened in thought. "Wait! Why _does_ he have that next to his computer?"

"You thought of something, Velma?" Daisy asked.

"I think so," Velma perked up. "This internet is different that the old one. I'm in a login page, but there's nowhere to type a username or a password. What if...its security was different, too? What if..." She thought of the image on the paper. "You had to...draw it?"

She took the paper from Daisy, placed it on the desk where she could see it, moved the cursor inside the box, held the mouse's left click button down to create a line, and carefully copied the image from the paper. When she was finished, she nervously clicked the Enter button.

The page suddenly changed, and a new page appeared, showing orderly lists of stored wealth stockpiled in a vast bank account and stored in numbered, private vaults.

"Yes!" Velma yelled. "I did it! _I did it!_ "

"What did you do?" Jason asked.

"I guess Greenman didn't take into account that by changing the world, he changed everything, even the world's computer technology. With everything being more or less pagan, I suppose personal symbology became a major part of cyber-security. That symbol must have been Greenman's icon, his identity on this internet."

"Then, that means that everybody might have there own symbol out on this Weird-wide Web," Jason reasoned.

"And Greenman must have kept his close to his computer, so he would always know how to draw it. Fascinating!"

"Well, what do we do, now?" Daisy asked, grateful that they were back on track.

"Now, we make some serious withdrawals," Velma said.

She opened another tab to Bubble, and this time, began searching for the names of charitable organizations created by the modest, surviving churches of the world that were driven into near-obscurity.

Armed with a long list of these humble institutions, she returned to the tab of Greenman's account page, and upon finding a window for optional donations, she typed in their names, and began parsing out huge, magnanimous shares of his fortune among them, each contribution feeling like a righteous gut-punch to Greenman, until, at long last, there wasn't a cent left to his villainous name.

She ignored the disclaimer that told her that once this was done, there was, legally, no going back, tapped the 'Enter' button under the donations window, and smiled, knowing that mere mortals had just delivered a death blow to Greenman's finances, and gave the varied, struggling faiths of this new world, a surprising and much-needed leg up on the competition.

"Finished!" Velma exclaimed, proudly. "Now, thanks to Greenman's bottomless generosity, the other world churches will be able to start spreading their word and they'll all compete, again."

Daisy gave a surprised look, upon hearing that. "Compete? Huh! I never actually thought of them as _competing_ , before."

All Velma could do, in the shadow of this metaphysical triumph, was shrug, philosophically. "Well, it won't be perfect. It never really was, but, at least, it'll be fair."

"Hey, guys," Red called from the living room. "Mayor Nettles is on TV."

The rest of the gang left the office and gathered around the couch, watching Janet Nettles, looking to her people with a mixture of hope, determination, and a hint of trepidation that this might not reach them in the way that she hoped.

"Good people of Crystal Cove," she began, with a calm, measured voice. "I want you to stop what you are doing, and take a look at what has happened, here. Fear and terrible misunderstanding have torn apart this town that we built and love. Our fear.

"I know that we're scared, and we don't understand. We need somebody to explain this new world to us. But, fighting our neighbors, destroying property, and stealing from one another is not how we'll come by those answers.

"We are the people of Crystal Cove, and whether we call ourselves Covites, Covians, or Covers, we are better certainly better than this, and we can prove it. But, I don't want you to prove to the world. We don't owe it anything. I just want you to prove it to yourselves.

"Thank you for listening."

The gang sat in momentary silence at the end of the broadcast, absorbing the mayor's earnest plea for both civic unity and stability.

"That was pretty heavy," Red commented.

"I hope people _are_ listening," said Velma.

"Yeah," Daisy added. "We need some sanity after what we've been getting. And now, we've got Thorn Soldiers running around? That can't be for her."

"No, it can't," Jason agreed. "But, I think there's a way we can help."

"How?" Red asked, incredulously.

"Like this," Jason said, pulling out his cell phone and dialing, quickly. "Hello, Sheriff?"

Stone's voice barked through the phone's tinny speaker. "Who is this? How did you get this number, and can't you call back, later? My wife is on TV, doing her mayor thing."

"We know. Sheriff," Jason explained. "There might be a way we can help the mayor and the town."

There was a pause in the harangue, and then, "I'm listening."

Jason gave a knowing glance to Velma. "Does the police station have wi-fi?"

* * *

Hovering over a souvenir booth, with strong strokes of his green wings, Greenman noticed that he was getting a little out of breath from their tumbling, wrestling match. Although Marcie, ultimately, had the upper hand with a fast, unexpected boot to the nethers, both combatants were visibly winded.

It soon became evident to both them why this was. He had spent centuries of his adult life fighting campaigns on the ground, and so, had the tactical advantage of experience, yet this kinetic, aerial, three-dimensional combat was something neither of them had truly mastered. Every strike, strafe, kick, and offensive dive was wholly improvisational, but any contact made between them became instinctive and brutal.

From her high vantage point, Marcie looked down, and saw the crowds scattering from under her. She hoped that it wasn't fear of her that made them run, but she also was grateful that they were leaving this dangerous area. No matter what they would have thought of her, they would be safe, so she could concentrate on the Wicker Man, which was still smoking from flaming shins and smoldering knees.

The choking clouds were so dark and thick, they obscured the structure's midsection, and she feared that the captives would surrender to the smoke long before the flames ever consumed them.

She prepared to hunch her shoulders and aim herself towards the effigy, when she noticed that the yells and screams from the throngs below were still insistent, as though there was something down there that continued to threaten them.

Greenman's distant laughter not only punctuated the situation, it confirmed it. "I'm afraid, Miss Fleach, that you may be a little preoccupied before you can stop my sacrifice from happening," he gloated, pointing over to one section of the crowd closest to an island of landscaping.

Stunned people were running from a crop of three, newly-grown Thorn Soldiers, shaking soil from their shoulders, and brandishing their weapons at brazen rubberneckers and slow-moving citizens.

"Ugh!" Marcie growled. "I forgot that they could do that!"

She clicked her heels to order the boots' pumps to reclaim a portion of Super Helium, oriented herself down, in mid-hover, and power-dove over the people, while Greenman gave her a regally dismissive wave, saying, "Take your time."

Landing between the Soldiers and the crowd, Marcie drew their creatures' collective attention to her, watching, as they quickly lumbered into flanking positions around her.

She moved to the first combatant, dodging an impaling thrust from its thorn-sword, and then, reaching out, she seized the weaponized arm, and yanked it free from its analogous elbow, greenish sap, flowing freely from the stump.

Its partner bore down on her with its sword, from the side, but Marcie, not letting go of her appropriated weapon, batted the incoming slash away, and then, thrust the tip up into its head.

As that Soldier's tree-like legs buckled, and it collapsed from its green life gushing out of the deep, cranial breach of its deflating head, the first Soldier's body had already bled out and fell, prompting its twitching bulb-arm to pull away, tearing from its shoulder.

Marcie noticed the bulb-arm moving like a beached octopus along the ground, seeking for the nearby landscaping, to plant itself. She took a step forward to intercept it, and then, screamed, as her back was lit with the fire of sudden pain, owing to the sword point of the flanking Soldier stabbing her from behind.

Marcie turned to face the creature, holding the part of her back that was pierced. She expected her palm to be bloody, when she raised her hands to fight her attacker, except that the suit wasn't penetrated.

The micro-mail integument of the skin, an inner layer of millions of microscopic, interlinking, metal chains, under a smooth, lightweight, chemical and puncture resistant outer layer, defied the stab, but still bruised her badly.

She channeled her ache into focused anger, desiring only to kill this thing, quickly. She reached up with a flap, and simply slashed its vulnerable head free, with a clawed hand.

Turning to face the fallen Soldiers, Marcie saw that they were arm-less, as their legacies were now crawling away to find safer places to grow.

Quickly, she jogged over and snatched up one bulb-arm by the tendril, and then, rushed to gather the other from the thinning herd of people, before flying back to get the bulb-arm that was just separating from the decapitated creature.

"Wait a minute," Marcie thought. "I thought there were four of them. Where's the other one?"

A scream from a woman who had lost her footing after a portion of the crowd had knocked her down in the stampede, alerted her to the location of the last bulb.

Crawling with purpose, it surged, blindly, towards the terrified woman, who did not realize that she had fallen near another island of landscaping that its rudimentary brain sensed as a good spot to spawn.

The woman curled into a ball of hopeless fright, but before the bulb-arm could slither over her to reach the turf, Marcie swooped low, and plucked it away from the petrified park-goer.

With an armful of writhing, struggling plant life, Marcie, quickly, looked around for somewhere to dispose of them. A peripheral glance at the fires, crawling up the Wicker Man's shins, gave her some much need inspiration.

Pivoting to its location, she released the dangerous brood into the fiery base of the statue, watching, as they twitched and curled in destructive agony, until all four bulbs were devoured in the conflagration.

Using the warm air around her to flap above the destruction, Marcie alighted on the damaged, upper rib-cage, and was immediately beset by the smothering fumes, continuing to blindly rip at the outer, wicker material, which proved flexible enough to resist some of her tearing, bending and keeping most of its shape, when it snagged against her claws.

"Dad!" she yelled into the dark clouds, before hacking for air. "Dad, are you okay? Mr. Owens and Mrs. Owens! Say something!"

She thought that she heard sounds of choking and half-shouts, but then, a sudden chorus of screams echoed from a distance, getting her immediate attention.

She, reluctantly, flew from the statue's miasma to see where the next disturbance was, and didn't have long to look, as Greenman, looking as though he was waiting for her, stood over the fallen operator of a nearby control panel, one that ran a lofty tower ride, while the riders, suspended at its apex, saw this winged creature, and yelled, worried about what he would do to the controls, far below them, while they felt like treed cats.

Sighing with fatigue, Marcie understood what this maniac was doing, creating one distracting crisis after another to keep her away from his alter. She could easily ignore the frightened, unwilling pawns in his game and simply focus on the Wicker Man, but could she live with herself, afterwards, if her inaction cost them their lives?

Stretching out, she bolted towards the tower, not bothering to dive towards Greenman. Instead, she ascended, climbing up to the trapped passengers.

Just as Greenman predicted. With a mighty, wooden fist, he smashed a crater into the top of the panel, which spat out a small storm of sparks and destroyed electronics, before spreading his leafy wings, and flying back towards his effigy.

Above, the car jerked and started in the throes of its malfunction, and then, just as the riders had feared, the car's electronic safeguards failed, its brakes released, and the sky and Marcie fell away from them, in a stomach-churning descent.

By raw reaction, Marcie twisted her body, hard, and winged over, letting herself almost free-fall to follow them, with only the natural friction of the car against its vertical tracks slowing them down enough for her to, at last, latch a desperate hand onto the framework above it.

For a few seconds, the scientific side of Marcie's mind gave her some reprieve, commenting on how this visit to the park, chaotic as it was, was giving her excellent data on the capabilities of Lilith, and in its own cold and clinical way, even thanked Greenman for putting the suit through its paces.

But now, it was the Super Helium's turn to show its chemical mettle, as she slapped the other hand onto the framework over the car. Sheer, brute strength was called for, but it couldn't come just from the suit. Now, the true lifting power of the gas's buoyancy would have to be tested.

Bringing her heels to tap together, Marcie started introducing more Super Helium into the suit, but it didn't just flow into the sealed bladders underneath the hips, breasts, and posterior, but also, smaller, ancillary ones within the biceps and calves, increasing the suit's overall surface area that the gas needed to work with.

At the same time, sensors picking up the forceful, downward shrug of Marcie's shoulders, told the flat, flexible motors underneath her wings to flap has hard the suit's enhanced strength would allow, as she endeavored to pull the car up from where she gripped it.

With a snap and a stiffly fluttering motion, the wings extended to their full lengths, acting as shuddering airbrakes, as they the thin, micro-mail fabric between the wings' 'bones' gathered all the air it could, without rupturing or tearing apart.

The car still continued to plummet, and for a brief moment, she thought of releasing some of her stored Super Helium onto the car and its screaming passengers, and if, by some miracle, it wasn't blown away in their wake, letting its properties reduce their atomic density that they could be light enough to be slowed down.

But, it was far too risky. The gas was the only thing keeping her aloft, and she needed every molecule of it to keep from being grounded while faced Greenman.

However, gradually, as she struggled, Marcie could begin to feel less and less resistance weigh against her, as her breaking and pulling, actually, began to lag the speed of the wayward ride.

"Hang on!" she yelled, and as they descended closer and closer to the grounds, the lessening of the passengers' cries, she noticed, also reflected this welcome change, as they, and the car, finally, touched down.

Marcie hopped off the top of the ride, and didn't have time to hear the people's shaken thanks, before she launched back into the sky to deal with the still flaming Wicker Man, and its mad creator.

Keeping himself aloft over the weakening structure, on the thermals caused by the fire, Greenman spared himself a few moments to watch as the flames rise higher, licking and blackening the effigy's hips. It wouldn't be long before the coughing, suffering fools inside would be served up for his personal gratitude and glory.

His situational awareness forced him to look away, and check back to where he left Marcie. She was already speeding to his position.

With a growl of annoyance, he flapped away, using the warm, rising air to give him a boost in speed and altitude, as he soared, like a great bird of prey, for the roller-coaster, in the distance, Marcie in hot pursuit.

From the corner of his eye, Greenman could see the swift open-air cars climb and zoom along the mountainous tracks, which inspired in him, a hasty idea.

Flapping as hard as he could, he climbed, as he headed in the direction of a low peak in the roller-coaster's course. Then, he dove, using the kinetic energy of his dive to give him the momentum needed to swoop, level out, and then, with a yell, smash through the steel supports under the apex of the peak, severely weakening the rails, above.

Effective as the distraction would be, it wasn't without painful cost, as Greenman had to land, soon after.

As people wisely gave him a wide berth where he landed, he shut his eyes, closing his concentration off from the world, and focused on being whole, as rent wings and a brutally gouged, wooden body slowly began to heal and mend.

In the midst of his regeneration, he looked up to see how Marcie would handle this new preoccupation.

Marcie, shocked to see Greenman actually torpedo himself through the ride to damage it, turned her concerned attention to the small train of cars preparing to end its circuit, by climbing the nearby high peak to gain enough potential energy to race down the slope, below, and crest the dangerous, lower rise, ahead, at speed.

Grimly satisfied at how the Lilith suit performed over at the tower ride, she banked towards the high-rise, flapping hard for more speed, and then, banked tightly, once more, to swiftly orient herself with the rear of the train, as it reached the top. A fast grip on the back edge of the last car was all she could find before the train rocketed down the slope.

Only the strength-enhancement of the suit kept Marcie's arm from being violently wrenched from its socket, as she, clumsily, held on, scaring the living daylights out of the riders.

The wind whipped over her wings, threatening to open them, like parachutes, and snatch her from the ride, as she fought for balance from this mind-bendingly dangerous stunt, and against the raw four-to-six G's of the shaky descent.

Frantically, she crawled, one hard-earned hand- and foot-hold after another, over the heads of the bewildered and upset passengers and their cars, as she battled to get to the forward car before the train reached the damaged peak.

Just as the train of cars swooped up from the valley between the slopes, a determined Marcie, looking as if her demon mask was still on her, bared her teeth and muscled her way to the front, brushed other hands away from the handrail to give her room, and locked her clawed hands onto it, praying that it would hold, and she timed herself for what came next.

She flexed her wings open and straightened her body out, so that she was being pulled along from the car, like a living kite, as the cars reached the summit.

Gritting her teeth, she gave the forward car a back-wrenching yank upwards, lifting it over the unsupported rails for the space of two seconds.

She let the car drop back onto the rails, far enough away, she hoped, from the weakened section.

It was, allowing the speed of only the mid and last portion of the train to burden the rise, momentarily, causing torn supporting, below, to fall free to the ground.

As the train, finally, rolled safely past, the rails, deformed from handling the sheer, vibrating weight of the cars, alone, suddenly, snapped from their softer welds, and curled away from each other, like cut, metal springs.

Fatigued and aching, Marcie let the car go and glided with the train, acting as an escort, as it entered the station.

A lanky, young man working the train's controls, stopped the train, and saw a winged Marcie land, exhausted, on the station's platform, while the passengers all disembark with barely restrained and panicked haste.

"Marcie?" he said, recognizing her in her strange attire. "What are you doing here?"

"Phil, shut the ride down!" she gasped, allowing time to try and settle her heart and rest. "Go to the office, and tell the staff to close down the park! Now!"

Phil, looking confused, tried to ask, "But, Marcie-"

"Just do it!" Marcie yelled, spreading her wings and letting the Super Helium lift her tired body aloft, while she slowly headed back to the Wicker Man, hoping that it wasn't too late.

The sound of a bell ringing by the front door of Hanley's hardware store stopped him from his task of stocking wrenches on the shelves.

He rushed over to his counter, ready to greet the potential customer, and instead, saw a group of people he wished that he never saw, again.

Sauntering past the threshold were three older teenagers, two boys, a large, slow-looking one and a lean, sly specimen, led by a slick-looking girl in a satin jacket and headphones.

"What are you doing, here? You're not allowed back!" Hanley warned, thinking about calling the sheriff, even though he and another group of teens nearly cleaned him out of gardening merchandise. "You planning to smash my store, again, like last time?"

"How didja know?" the large felon asked, then felt a sharp elbow in the arm from the girl, who addressed the proprietor in a tone more contrite, or disinterested than either her attitude or outfit suggested.

"What he meant to say was that we came back to work off the damages to your store. My old man saw the mayor on TV, and he wants me to put things right with you, so we came here to ask if you want us to do anything for you. He said that with those monsters running around, we need to stick together, or something."

Hanley gritted his dentures and glared at them. He didn't know what made his old blood boil more, the nerve of these criminals returning to the scene of the crime, the notion that they thought that he would ever forgive them for the vandalism done to him, or the obvious insincerity in their distaff leader's voice upon offering to make such futile amends.

"Well, the only monsters I see around here, are you three," the store owner said, angrily. "But yes, as a matter of fact, there _is_ something you can do. Get out of here! Leave! You've done more than enough damage, and I don't want to catch you hoodlums darkening my doorway, ever again, or it's the sheriff, next time!"

All heads, suddenly, turned to the sound of someone approaching from outside the front door, and before Hanley could recollect his professional composure and cordially react to the new visitor, the door was smashed inward and skidded across the floor.

Everyone quickly stepped away from the rent door, giving the two Thorn Soldiers and a single Herb Hound the extra room they needed to make an intimidating entrance.

"Whoa!" exclaimed the thin boy of the group. "So, that's what they look like, close up!"

"You hoodlums brought those things with you, didn't you?" Hanley wailed, as dire visions of his business being leveled by the creatures, only for the remains to be scavenged by these punks, was starting to manifest, to him.

"Are you crazy, man?" the large boy yelled out. "Those things'll wipe us all out!"

Hanley saw the girl zip into a nearby aisle. Fearing that she was about to run out with ill-gotten gain, he asked, loudly, "What are you doing?"

"I'm not gonna be fertilizer for those things!" she answered, then said to her friends, "Grab something, guys! Maybe we can fight out way out!"

She grabbed the closest thing her hand could find from the mouth of the aisle she was standing near, a hatchet. Her compatriots reached for a nearby broom and mop, swinging and holding them out to hold the Herb Hound and one of the Thorn Soldiers at bay.

The other Soldier turned to Hanley, the closest target of opportunity to it.

Hanley stepped away from the counter and was preparing to hide under it, when the girl, moved by the knowledge that the old man was going to get pulverized, twisted around and flung the hatchet at the monster.

It sang through space, until its sharp head sank fairly deep into the Soldier's back.

The Thorn Soldier stopped its advance, and then, turned its bulk to face the now defenseless attacker.

The girl, keeping her eyes on the creature, blindly reached out for another hatchet, but only succeeded in spilling them from their rack and onto the floor, as she saw its long thorn-sword rear back to spear her with little effort.

Then, the sword swung back, limply, to the Soldier's side, the hatchet that was buried in its back, now buried in its head, lightly splattering ichorous sap across her surprised face.

The following sounds of thick, flexible wood and plant matter tearing, cracking and breaking filled the hardware store, as three strangers calmly stormed through the bosky barricade and proceeded to dismember and decapitate the remaining Soldier, and then, crack the solitary Hound in two.

A woman's foot stomped into the curling bulb-arm of one of the Soldiers, splitting it against the tiled floor into two, smeared, wet halves. She then looked up from her gristly work with a pleasant smile and greeted the dumbfounded humans on behalf of her partners.

"Good afternoon, citizens," she said, as if nothing had happened. "My friends and I were sent by the Mayor to assist in this crisis. We will be doing all we can to help rid Crystal Cove of this menace. You have the Mayor's word. Please excuse us."

The three Questoids walked from the store, leaving the occupants both shaken from the close-call, and, for one old man, gradually rethinking his hasty, negative opinions of Mayor Nettles.

Finally arriving back at the burning colossus, she could see Greenman, once again standing upon the head of the statue, both to stand watch over it, and to enjoy a commanding view of the usurped park and its poor defender.

"Greenman," Marcie called out, huffing from where she floated, to rest. "Why are my father and the Owenses in that thing?"

Greenman assumed a casual and mockingly thoughtful pose, slowly pacing around the top of the head, in the appearance of collecting his thoughts. "Well, the esteemed Mr. Ricky Owens is in there, because his Roman ancestor killed my father, centuries ago, his pregnant wife shares his fate, so I can make her suffer, as I cut off their bloodline, forever, as a more lasting punishment, and your father, Winslow, is in there, because, well, I just hate loose ends."

Marcie gave him a weary, yet grim smile, saying to him, "Then we have something in common, Greenman, because I don't like loose ends, either. In fact, you might want to think about where my friends are, at the moment."

For the first time, today, Greenman looked worried. "What are you talking about?"

"Well, while we've been here, airing out our differences, my friends should be in your home, about now, doing what all young people do when they have the place to themselves, raiding your refrigerator, running up your phone bill...and using your computer without your permission."

"What?" he growled, his concerns growing by the second.

Catching her breath, it was now Marcie's turn to look insufferably coy, as she considered. "Oh, I wouldn't know what they're doing, right now, but it's safe to say that my friends can be pretty imaginative when it comes to causing trouble, and I bought them plenty of time to cause you some."

"Then, I swear to you, girl," he muttered, under his breath. "Before your people turn to ash, I'll make you pay for every sabotage your friends inflict!" Greenman cried out, expanding his wings and leaping out at her.

Marcie wheeled over and dove, heading, with a swoop, towards a high mounted sign furthest from the area - Greenman's Garden of Glee.

An accelerating Greenman, too caught up in his bloodlust, pursued her too closely, and upon hearing his approaching wing beats, she took a sudden turn from the sign.

Greenman, not having to her smaller frame and better maneuverability, couldn't react and steer in time, crashing into the sign with force enough to snap its posts and make it fall to the ground.

"Ha, now that's a marked improvement!" she taunted in the sky. Then, she turned to the sound of the heavy, low-frequency whumps of rotor blades.

A CCN news helicopter circled the Wicker Man's black column of smoke, chronicling the sacrifice in progress, and the battle raging around it, as the grounds of the closing park were clearing of frightened park-goers.

Inside, only the screams, coughs and yells accompanying the loud, crackling fire, could be heard from the effigy, as Winslow and The Owenses, hearing the helicopter, as well, carefully started climbing up the warp and weave of the torso's smoky, wicker interior, trying to escape the terrifying flames that were now creeping up and feeding on both legs and one hip, on their way to enter the nearby mid-section.

Marcie and Greenman, their eyes locked on the Wicker Man and each other, raced through the sky to be the first one, there. But, before either one got close enough, they both realized that only the winner of this conflict would also win control of the statue, so they intercepted each other, and clashed, like raptors.

Marcie kicked away from Greenman, before he had the chance to overwhelm her with his size, larger wingspan, and strength, but she had no way of knowing, that even as all of Crystal Cove watched, spellbound, by the battle, the fate of the nature of Druidry, and thus, the fate of this new world, was also being decided on by this conflict, and as a result, pagan viewers from across the globe were watching the international news with partisan eyes.

Some cheered wholeheartedly for Greenman and his blood-soaked, traditionalist ways, while others, representing more progressive views, rooted for this strange and incredibly brave girl, defending life below her, and standing up to his murderous dogma.

Yet, as the statue continued to burn and threaten the lives inside, every blow and slash Marcie risked close-contact to land, was now being shrugged off, more easily, and rapidly healed. She was tiring out and her reflexes slowed further, allowing Greenman to land punishing, slashing blows on her.

A swift, opportunistic punch from Greenman connected with Marcie's eye, knocking her, with a yelp, into a backward tumble.

She was tempted to stop and favor the injury, but instead, not wanting to give him time to think, she shook her head, used the momentum of the knock-back to give her enough speed to make a tight turn, and fly back to a waiting Greenman.

He was expecting her to charge into him, as she had in the beginning, in which case, he was prepared to catch her in a bear hug and crush her beneath his folded wings, but he was effectively caught off-guard, when, at the last minute, Marcie folded her wings and tucked into a tumbling, fetal position.

When she judged herself close enough, she stretched out of her roll into a speeding kick that connected the toe of her boot into the bridge of his nose, crushing it.

With a howl, he flew backwards, as Marcie flew past him, on a direct course for the effigy's weakened rib-cage.

Her mind, suddenly, exploded with the pain of, what felt like, both a punch and a cutting sensation, from behind, as Greenman caught up with her, and with a single slash of his wooden talons, tore ragged slits through the defeated micro-mail of her suit's skin and deep, red furrows across her back.

Although her gas bladders weren't breached, the blow, coupled with her already intense exhaustion, knocked the wind out of her, making her stop flapping her wings, and fall without protest.

She desperately wanted to rest, and would have done anything to be promised to sleep and forget about everything that happened this year, but then, a wooden hand with an iron grip reached out and grabbed her by the throat, like a Questoid, just before she fell.

Stoically, Greenman held Marcie out at arm's length, while his massive wings lifted them both higher and higher above the park with every wing stroke. Even as she uselessly punched and banged on an arm that might as well have been made of industrial-strength steel, he said nothing, as they ascended.

The CCN news cameras stayed on the image of the two of them rising, ever more, as if Greenman was some forest-clad angel bringing a bespectacled demoness to Heaven for punishment. Then, he, finally, spoke to her.

"What is religion?" Greenman asked her, rhetorically. "It is a mask with two faces, one, the usurper, the other, the missionary. One man's terrorist is the other man's crusader. I love my faith and I've broken men on the battlefield to elevate that faith, because, in _my_ eyes, my gods are good, and rational, and just, and generous.

"My father was a good man, and an even better druid. His devotion inspired me, and I would have been more than content to learn under that noble priesthood, if a Roman soldier hadn't come and showed me what religion, _true_ religion, was, by doing what any good dog of war did, and slaughter an innocent man while he was trying to save his oak trees.

"Long generations of history, knowledge and culture was put the torch and the sword, just to prop up their already stolen Greek gods. But, my gods of old answered my prayers, made me an immortal defender of the faith, and, eventually, moved me to cross your path."

Upon saying that, he tightened his grip on her, a little more. Whether he was satisfied with simply choking her or breaking her neck, Marcie didn't dare relax, as she gasped.

She looked down at the burning Wicker Man and her personal failure. She couldn't hope to break his hold, and she couldn't save her father or The Owenses. They and the cherished memory of their hometown would perish under this madman's impending theocratic tyranny.

"Now, after all of that, you may be asking yourself, "If different people's gods are so powerful, then why do they let these people fight in their name?" he asked, softly. "The answer is that, like the Romans and their pantheon, the Christians and their Crusades, and the various other cultures pressing their beliefs upon still others, we're all in physical, bloody competition to see which religion wins out in the end. It's been waged before, and above this park, it was waged, again.

"I won't ask what you believe in, because it would be meaningless. My sacrifice _will_ be offered up before the sun sets on this sad, little town. What matters is, whether or not, you can strike my faith and power from the mountaintop, and stop me from tearing your world apart in my gods' holy names. That is a form of warfare I can _truly_ respect."

With that, Greenman power-lifted Marcie with his one arm, over his head, as if giving a grim, grand toast, his clutch putting focused pain upon her windpipe and nape.

Attempting to twist her head to relieve the agony, Marcie, fearfully, looked down. Time was running out.

Below her, the Wicker Man's legs, pelvis, one arm, its shoulder, and a portion of its head were now on fire, and, she noticed, it, or rather the old ride that it replaced, was awkwardly placed near to the new water slide and pool her father had purchased, recently. Under better circumstances, she would have complained to him about such ride arrangement.

 _'So close...'_ she thought, regretfully. _'The burning man, so close to the water that could have...'_

Then, her eyes widened. _'Wait a minute!'_ she thought, again. _'That's it!_ That's it _! Two birds with one stone!'_

Focusing her strength, Marcie whipped out a kick to Greenman's throat that would have shattered the larynx of a normal man. Instead, his eyes popped in choking pain, his hand sprung open, and while he frantically held his throat, Marcie, quickly, flew off.

"Where are you...going, little bird?" he gasped, sprouting writhing vines from his forearms, while he watched her glide away, his windpipe starting to clear. "Afraid I'll clip...your wings?"

Mentally mapping herself from where she flew, Marcie banked high and around, so that, from her new course, the Wicker Man, now belching fire from weakened holes in its body, and the recovering Greenman, were between her and the water slide.

She came in, soaring at her fasted speed, yet, stretching her lean, tired body, like an arrow, and flew directly into the waiting vines of Greenman, ramming him in the torso, as she wrapped her arms around him, attempting to pin his broad arms to his sides.

"What are you doing, _detective?_ " Greenman chuckled, slowly coiling his tangle of ivy around her body and throat, while she continued to shove him backwards with every wing beat. "Something desperate, perhaps? You can't hurt me, child!"

"Maybe!" Marcie yelled through gritted teeth, straining against his muscled bulk to keep on course. "But I'll bet _this_ will!"

Out of concerned curiosity, Greenman craned his neck to see what she was talking about. With sheer effort and will, she was steering them on a meteoric, high-speed, collision course with his fiery alter.

That, normally, would have just inconvenienced him, if it was simply damaged, but her sudden action seemed to have a glimmer of method to her madness, an aggressive tactic that he had not seen in time, that sobered him with an uncomfortable fear of uncertainty.

"What are-What are you doing?" he asked, struggling against the equally struggling, leverage-robbing hold of her strength-enhanced arms, her trapezius muscles on fire from moving his resisting, extra weight.

"One way or another," she sobbed in agony, almost to herself, as her aching body closed in on her target. "You're getting...a sacrifice!"

Not fully understanding what she knew, his confidence, suddenly, left him, as the two smashed through the Wicker Man's flaming head, like a large bullet.

With the head and shoulders of the statue burning, it prevented Winslow and The Owenses from trying to climb any further up the walls of the inner cavity, but the sharp collision of Marcie and Greenman almost jarred the trapped victims loose and made them fall into the blazing guts and pelvis of the structure.

However, the impact caused the statue's fire-weakened feet to tear free of the metal supports that held it to the mock stone pillar.

The legs, glowing like charcoals, couldn't support the unstable center of gravity, as the Wicker Man began to tip over; crumbling the limbs into a shower of embers that spread all over the cars on one side of the Rolling Boulder ride.

Then, the rest of the crippled statue, ponderously, collapsed and crashed its deceptive weight across those same boulder cars, ruining the harnessing ley line circuit.

A massive power build-up breeched the top of the facsimile pillar, releasing a blazing, blinding font of primal energies to touch the sky, while the Wicker Man, at last, toppled into the water slide's extinguishing receiving pool.

Minutes passed, and then, after recovering from the crash and finding a wide tear in the prison-like chest where the sternum would be, a shaken Winslow and Ricky Owens, gingerly, helped Cassidy out. Then, all three captives carefully waded from the cooling effigy, as its ruined trunk rested, partially, in the shallow end of the pool.

Further away and unseen by her father, however, Marcie and Greenman floated on large flotsam from the head's remains, over at the pool's far deeper end.

Still draped with long, thick, floating vines that hung about her, like loose lanyards, Marcie tried to keep a watchful eye on her nearby foe, while trying to dismiss the sheer exhaustion and pain from injuries she was suffering from.

Along with her black eye and lacerated back, one of her shoulders was on pulsating fire, the victim of a dislocation. A raw gash raged across her forehead from the maelstrom of fiery wood and violence she passed through, and a splinter, half the length of a ruler, from the Wicker Man's cranial framework had broken off, its sharp end pierced through her throbbing upper arm.

Minor tears and rips from the battle had rendered her integrity of her suit useless. From the crash, so much Super Helium had leaked from ruptured internal bladders, that flying was now impossible, and she was forced to keep from drowning by fighting to stay awake upon a small piece of bobbing wicker head.

Grimly, Greenman had fared far worse. His back, the first thing that connected with his alter, was broken, and his now half-wood and ivy, half-flesh body was badly burned and transfixed with a sharp, snapped length of lean, wooden cranial frame.

Listing on his human half, he shivered in unfamiliar agony, as he slowly shifted his head around to gauge the state of his opponent.

"The gods...warned me over and...over," he gasped, trying to keep his face above the deep water of the pool. "They called you my...mirror, but unlike you, I see...that I failed my home...my father, and now...my faith. Campaigns against true masters-at arms...and I was brought low...by some meddlesome...girl." He almost swallowed pool water, giving in to a sad laugh.

Marcie tried to balance herself on her makeshift raft, her shoulder aching sharply. "Sticks...and stones," she quipped, seething through her teeth.

"You've led your people into...battle to avenge the...old world...like a...warrior queen," he slowly admitted to her.

Consciousness was flittering from Greenman's mind like a small, quick bird, and was becoming just as hard to recapture. The muscles in his neck burned at trying to keep his face above the waterline, but finally, his body proved too weak, his wounds too grave and severe.

There was no more time for thoughts of fear or failure, as the night of death was closing around him, yet time enough for a final farewell, before that darkness and its subsequent judgment took the misguided crusader.

"Marcia Anne Fleach..." he shakily addressed his enemy, fully. "Defender of Cry-Crystal Cove...Yours...is the victory."

In complete exhaustion, his large body, almost reforming into bleeding, dying flesh, weighed him down so thoroughly, that he, quietly, slipped into the water.

Marcie's head laid down on the wicker raft to rest, but she was far too tired and pained to notice that the inert vines, still attached to the few wooden parts of Greenman's sinking body, had cinched and tighten around her, like loose rope, allowing his dead weight to drag her, silently, into the depths of the cold pool.

She didn't have energy or time to gulp in air, before she went under, and it didn't take long for her lungs to start aching on their own, and her anxious pulse to bang, alarmingly, in her ears.

Wearily, Marcie tried to shake, as best she could, to free herself from her tethers, but the wet vines still gripped against the tattered skin of her suit, and its broken wings, keeping her anchored to the departed Greenman.

She grimaced in breathless agony, and soon regretted that she wouldn't be around to enjoy a long life with her father, who acknowledged her, in the end, her friends, whose bonds were forged from adventure, and most importantly, with her Velma.

Terribly, at last, panicked resistance gave way to the inevitable, as Marcie, reflexively, inhaled terrifying lungfuls of cold water that made her spasm and convulse in her asphyxiation and insensibility.

In the deep, cold embrace of the pool, her last conscious thoughts, as a shadowy hand appeared in the faint distance, and the growing silence and darkness closed in around the edges of her perception, were of spending eternity with her ghostly double, having to explain that, like her, she too, had died for her V.


	8. Chapter 8

A new-born wave of aggression moved through the town, as Thorn Soldiers and Herb Hounds ran and shambled quickly towards their collective target, in small grouped clusters.

That wave, however, was born on the actions of an spreading, irate mob of civically-motivated citizens, police, and reprogrammed Questoids, carrying bladed, makeshift weapons, bottles of herbicide and bleach, and naked blood-, or, in this case, saplust, in an effort to take back their town from the weirdness that beset them all.

It started as a pitched battle through the neighborhoods, with the creatures gradually gaining ground with every retreat they caused. Then, the sheriff with his deputy-gardeners, would cut them off at strategic points in the town to prevent them from taking over the residential zones, before the Soldiers used their Greenman-motivated pseudo-brains to regroup, probe for weaknesses in Stone's advances, and break through their lines to slaughter them.

That was when the Questoids began fanning out in the city in small squads, picking off peripheral patrols, like in Hanley's Hardwares, and coming up behind the bulk of the plant army and tearing into them, while the police pressed their assault from the front.

The plants would have stayed their ground against the Pincer Movement, and fought until there was nothing left to animate, but then, something incredible and impossible had happened: Greenman was finally laid low, and without his mind to help guide and focus their own on given tasks, they were, suddenly, left to their own primitive devices, which demanded one response to their dwindling numbers under the concentrated human onslaught - self-preservation.

And so, the surviving hordes of hacked and chemically-burned Thorn Soldiers and cowed packs of Herb Hounds beat a shambling, leafy retreat towards their collective target, the main road that lead past the town's city limits, and then, began to surge back into the green depths of the Pine Barrens, where they were grown.

The angry citizenry began cautiously falling back, when they realized that following them into the woods, where the creatures would have the terrain advantage, might not have been tactically prudent.

Sheriff Stone gave a guttural roar in triumph, accompanied by victory cries of from the rest, before they turned and began re-entering the town.

Bucky approached Stone, while the sheriff kept a suspicious watch of the forest, ahead, and asked him, worryingly, "Uh, Sheriff, I know we did good, and all, but did we just introduce some new and invasive species into our eco-system?"

The musing on the ecological ramifications of their group action lasted only a moment, before Sheriff Bronson Stone, finally shrugged, in the middle of the road.

"Eh, it'll be fine," he dismissed.

* * *

A bird sang.

At least, that was what Marcie's perception told her, once she found herself in the middle of a beautiful, bucolic clearing.

The light scent of flowers was carried on the breeze that she felt, and then, she noticed that the wind was the only thing she felt. Every trace of pain that wracked her body was gone from her.

She looked at herself. She was clad in her normal clothes, strangely, but her body was intact.

Absently, she thought about the hereafter, and wondered if this was what her double experienced after her fatal shooting, or perhaps, after she moved on. She always considered herself a good person, so if this setting was to be inferred, then it was the shape of good things to come.

A few yards from her, sat an indistinct figure on what looked like a throne, prompting her to approach, hoping for answers. When the figure, a comely man looking to be in his mid-thirties and dressed in a black, silk business suit, decided that she was close enough, he casually raised a hand to stop her from coming nearer.

"Are you..." Marcie started to ask from where she stood.

"No," the man said, in a strong Irish accent. "But answer me this, detective. What do you think is more tragic, blood spilt, knowingly, or unknowingly? What is the greater offense, a necessary murder, or an unnecessary killing?"

Marcie, confused, ignored the question and asked, "Who are you?"

"Esus, Teutates and Taranis."

"Ugh! I've been hearing those names so long, now, they sound like a law firm," she sighed. "Plus, I see only you, here, so unless you're suffering from split personalities…"

"If I am, it's better than you swallowing half a water park, but congratulations!" the man said to her. "You just cut the strings off the world's most dangerous puppet."

"Puppet?" That gave Marcie pause. "Greenman?"

The man nodded. "One and the same."

Marcie shook her head, trying to clear it of the mental cobwebs. "But wait, I thought three gods were responsible for all of this. Who are you?"

"I'm sorry, my dear. Where _are_ my manners?" the man asked, standing from his seat. He waved his hand before her, and another chair appeared behind her for her to sit in. "I'm Fear Doirich and I'm a powerful, evil druid, not to put too fine a point on it."

Marcie took her seat. "Fear Doirich?"

"Call me Fear," he said, breezily. "I'm all about me. Personal power, self-gratification, the whole kit and caboodle."

"What does that have to do with Greenman?"

"Look at it from my side," Fear explained, leaning back in his chair. "The Celtic gods saw the writing on the wall with the Roman Empire, because their conquests spelled the end of the Druid way of life. Do you know what it's like, looking down the barrel of oblivion? No fun, especially for a guy who likes to spread a little mayhem around with a distinctly Celtic flair."

"Like you, obviously?"

Fear gave a smirk. "Guilty. So, when Greenman's father was killed by a Roman soldier, I had an idea. He prayed to whom he _thought_ were his gods, for help, but instead, he got me. I'd give him whatever he wanted, which would give me, and a powerful benefactor I know, what _we_ wanted."

Marcie, secretly, gave her host a cagey look. The knowledge of someone who just professed to be up to no good, and the existence of a so-called 'benefactor' sponsoring him was cause for concern.

"Which was?" she asked.

"The most justified self-interest there is. Survival. Continuation. Existence, the sole right of any being. Anyway, I, in no uncertain terms..." He took a deep breath and raised a hand to count down with. "...Told him that he'd be our defender of the faith, gave him the powers of The Green Man, hence his nome de guerre, and pretty much made him immortal through the power of the threefold death, kept an eye on that Roman soldier's bloodline throughout the years, told him the location of ley lines, so when he got his sacrifices off the ground, he could kick off the festivities, in grand style, and clued him in to time travel, so that, ultimately, our way of life would come back big! _Whew!_ "

"I suppose it was a good thing he was smart enough to take that history book with him, so he had an edge," Marcie replied, wondering how to leave this strange, troubling figure.

Fear agreed. "Well, my boy was so happy with his successes, over the centuries, that he wanted to kill two birds with one Wicker Man, as it were. He would give "us" our due for helping him out, with his three sacrifices, and then, he'd snuff out the descendant of the Roman soldier, at the same time. Heck, he deserved it. Besides, my benefactor was already over the moon from all of the killing he had done in the past."

"Oh," he added. "Sorry that I had him screw you and your father over like that, but he really needed a win."

The callous mentioning of her father, whom she hoped was all right, and his downfall, hardened her. "Don't change the subject. You're telling me that you tricked Greenman? He was innocent, all along, and you played on his faith to use him?"

"Tricked?" Fear asked, lightly. "No, more like, I played him, like a cheap harp."

"That's pretty evil," she had to admit.

"Hello! Evil druid!"

"He should know what you did to him."

Fear shrugged, again. "Oh, he should, by now, and the misery he'll feel, knowing what he did to so many people, for so many years, will keep my benefactor strong for a very long time. You can pity or mourn him, if you like."

Marcie decided that in the quiet moments of her afterlife, which she guessed would be a lot, she probably _would_ do that, but for now, the truth was desired more. "I'll put a pin in that, but thanks to you three, I-I mean...just _you_ , the world will have to pick up the pieces, and try to make sense of this mess!"

"Well honestly, missy, there wouldn't be any mess, if your town had just changed like the rest of the world did, but _nooooo!_ "Fear clucked, like a wet hen, with rolled eyes. "You talk about messes? Those _Annunaki_ messed things up when they brought that Mystery Incorporated, here, pushing the native versions of themselves into the past, which created a space-time disruption, over your town, that was super-charged by the ambient energy of the ley lines under your dad's park. _That_ shielded Crystal Cove from the changes to the timeline, when it happened!"

Marcie's eyes widened in realization, and an amazed chuckle slipped from her. "So _that's_ why we didn't change."

"It won't last, though," he dismissed.

"Why's that?"

"In this new timeline, people used to think that Crystal Cove was a cursed town, so no one ever went here. Thanks to you and your buddies, this place is famous, now. The town where the Undying Pagan Emperor... _died_. People will come and go from there, all the time, now. Do you know what that means? That means that your precious Crystal Cove may had been protected from the new history, at first, but not from its culture, not now.

"Pagan culture is already all around you. It's coming in from the outside and will change you, over time, and then, Crystal Cove will catch up with the rest of the world. This is just prolonging the inevitable," Fear gloated.

Now, it was Marcie's turn to shrug at her host. "So what? Pagan culture was _already_ around us, before the change. The foundation of our language? Latin, the language of pagan Italians, our government, democracy, created by pagan Greeks, our fiction, like fairy tales and folklore, again, pagans. Humanity's not as cut and dry as you'd like to believe. This is still America...I think. We embrace the different. It's a gift, not a curse, and we'll only get stronger with more of it. Oh, and don't count my town's culture out, either. We can change the world, and be just as influential, too."

Fear was slightly taken aback by that missed issue. She did have a strong point, based on the original history of the world, and he wondered, in the midst of his long machinations, how he didn't see that little detail, earlier.

"Well, thanks for the history lesson," he said, graciously. "And may I, also, say that you and your friends were nothing short of unpredictable. I _like_ that. You getting involved, to begin with, and then, all of your friends helping you stop Greenman's sacrifices, and stealing his fortune to donate to the other religions of the world to give them a leg up."

"They did that, back at his house?" a stunned Marcie asked, not realizing the depth of the damage they were willing to risk dispensing on Greenman, or the repair they were willing to give to the world, from where they were. "Whoa!"

"I know! Right?" Fear exclaimed, admiringly. "I didn't want you around messing things up, but boy, did you! That's why "we" had to keep warning Greenman about little ol' you! Oh, and here's the ironic bit, no matter how loudly you might deny it, because of what you've done to Greenman, those wussy neo-pagans, out there, will always see you as one of their own, more druid than our pawn ever was, and he was dangerously devout!"

Marcie didn't immediately know how to deal with that. The last thing she thought about, when facing Greenman, was becoming some legend for a religion she didn't even follow. "I'm flattered, but you painted yourself into a corner, Mr. Fear. Even with the world being what it is, it's pretty Kumbaya, right now. With Greenman gone, there shouldn't be any serious conflicts, which means, no future for you, or your benefactor."

"Hmm, you'd think that," he thoughtfully pointed out. "But, I like to plan for the long haul. See, Greenman was old school, and he liked things just as they were. When he recruited his followers, in the past, and they fell in line, they became traditionalists, too.

"But, when he left to come back to the present, he wasn't around to enforce that point of view. As a result, Druidry changed over time, becoming more liberal and less bloody, creating a whole new camp of followers who were ideologically opposed to the more... _stringent_ parts of our faith, as it were, and now, all they do is debate the issue. Yawn!

"But, what if we gave another traditionalist a helping hand, like we did with Greenman, a real firebrand who could set off a great war, one that could last for decades, maybe even centuries, keeping my friend hale and hearty, from all of that unnecessary hardship and strife, for a _very_ long time?"

The calmness Fear displayed in relating the dire scope of such an event made Marcie shudder. Wars were complicated affairs, right down to their reasons, and a world war would get far worse for the people she left behind, before it ever got better.

She wished that whoever this man was, he would just leave the world alone. "You'd do that? Pit people against one another, just to keep you and this _friend_ of yours on top?"

Again, Fear shrugged. "Well, I _did_ say I was evil, didn't I? Think of it as a life-support system, for him, if you will. Create a world full of followers, have said followers endlessly fight and die under a tragically mistaken belief, which, in turn, makes my friend strong."

"Why are you telling me all of this?" Marcie asked, suspiciously.

"Think of it as a reward for bringing down Greenman. Besides, it's not like you could do anything to stop it. The only cog in the machine that was missing, for a while, was the conflict, but I think I can get that started."

That threat, combined with simple outrage and concern, drew Marcie, indignantly, from her seat, to stare Fear down, not caring, at the moment, that she was nothing more than some neophyte phantom to him.

"Look, I'm not all that thrilled about this new world you created, but you're not hurting millions of people, in this scheme of yours," she heard herself challenge him. "If you try to pull this off, I'll find a way to stop you, even if I have to come back as the Dead Justice of my world, to do it!"

That display of bravado brought a bemused smile on Fear's face. "Well, I like your spunk, girl," he said, honestly, and then, whispered, "But, who said you were dead?"

"Huh?"

* * *

The illusory span of time was only in the space of minutes. The forest clearing, the chairs, and the mysterious man had vanished, the song of birds was replaced by the mutters of concerned people, the calm lapping of water, and a vaguely familiar voice faintly calling her name from the veil of numb perception.

A crushing force was pressing against her breasts, and a shadow had fallen over Marcie's fuzzy sight, but the oddest feeling she could begin to perceive was the firm pressure she felt on her lips.

She spasmed and coughed up a cupful of warm water from her stinging lungs, and then, gasped in the welcoming air, again. The clouds of confusion started to lift from her fluttering vision, and the shadow backed away, letting daylight fall upon...

"V?" Marcie identified, weakly.

Kneeling from performing hasty CPR, a wet, grateful, and tearful Velma looked over a ragged Marcie, outside the water slide's pool, while behind her, wrapped in EMT-given blankets, Winslow and The Owenses, helplessly, looked on.

"I had the gang bring me here, in case you needed help against Greenman," she explained, not caring if Marcie understood, or even approved the seemingly futile gesture, but only talking to her to help keep Marcie conscious.

"V..." If there were words Marcie wanted to say to her dearest friend, exhaustion and physical weakness had taken their heavy toll on her, and she could say nothing more, and _do_ nothing more than sleep.

It didn't matter to Velma.

"I told you I'll protect you," she whispered. Then she moved plastered strands of long hair from Marcie's face, gently, sat her up, and held her, as she heard the EMTs' approach and take over the rescue.


	9. Chapter 9

Marcie's sore body awoke some days later, to the scent of antiseptic in the air, the bright haze of morning, and the steady beep of machines monitoring her stirring vital signs.

A television, mounted on the wall above her, was left on, its volume low. On the air was a news report, reminiscing of the fight in the amusement park, weeks ago, interspersed with reactions and memories from local citizens, and then, from opposing, religious views of Greenman's death and his slayer, from worshippers across the American Union, and abroad.

In closing, the news anchor stated in her report, that because of Greenman's traditionalist stances on Druidry, that countered the more life-affirming, Neo-pagan views on the faith, his fall was believed to have signaled that the chances of them returning to such dangerous extremes was broken, citing that, to many, Marcie has become one of the unforeseen symbols of their argument, an unexpected champion of their beliefs.

With a sigh at her newfound, religious fame, she looked around the room, seeing eye-catching greeting cards and flowers decorating the window sill and nearby table, and enough healing stones to start a rock garden, all given from friends and well-wishing Neo-pagans from Gatorsburg, who prayed for her a speedy recovery and offered fond words to their 'honorary druidess.'

Deciding to go enjoy the cards and bouquets, later, Marcie felt curious and wanted to move out on her own. By her bed, she saw an open wheelchair.

A knock on the door stopped her from sliding out of bed to use it. "Come in," she bade.

A woman stepped inside with uncertainty and took a look at Marcie. Marcie looked at her, and her breath caught in her throat.

"Mom!"

Anne Fleach, now an adult, again, but wearing her brunette hair up in a different style, saw the shocked girl beaming in bed, and turned around to see who she was addressing. No one was behind her.

"Mom, what's wrong?" asked Marcie.

"I'm sorry," the woman said.

"What?" This didn't sound right, at all, to Marcie. "Wait! Mom, what's wrong? We ran from Dr. Quest, remember? It's all right. He's not here, any more. It's safe. Did Sundial help bring you to your right age?"

The visitor's expression changed at the mention of the think tank. "Sundial? Some people from someplace called Sundial said that they tracked my signature, or something, and told me that my daughter was in this hospital."

"Yes!"

"But, I don't have a daughter," the woman said, apologetically, shaking her head. "I'm not even married. I just came here to see what they were talking about, but I'm sorry that I disturbed you, dear."

Marcie hoped some delayed-action, druid trickery was afoot. She wished, in her bones, that this was a lie, that she was still under the effects of the anesthesia, but it was too real, as was the woman's honest-looking confusion. As impossible, as it was, _this_ was the new truth of this world.

"You're Anne Fleach, right?" Marcie asked, slowly, already knowing the terrible, terrible answer.

"Yes."

"But, you're...you're not really...her, are you?" Marcie asked her, her heart feeling like it was dropped into a black, bottomless void, and with another honest shake of the woman's head, Marcie knew that she had joined that awful company of people whose loved ones were taken from them, even in a temporal, cold, metaphorical sense.

This was the stealthy victory of her enemy, not the pawn, Greenman, but Fear, one whose personal sting wasn't felt until the battle had long since passed, and this reality's icy blade slipped into numbing Marcie's heart.

Anne Fleach was gone, and not gone. Here, and yet not.

This woman, who only resembled Anne, wasn't the woman who tucked her daughter into bed before the divorce, or made her appreciate the world of chemistry and science, and loved her enough to draw danger away, when they met again, years later.

If Marcie mentioned any of those things to this woman, she would only be rewarded with polite confusion and hard realizations.

_'She's gone! My…mother's gone! Because of you, Fear, Greenman,_ whoever _!'_ she thought, bitterly, gritting her teeth and blinking back tears. _'I want you to burn in whatever hell you believe in!'_

Self-conscious of the drama playing out on her face, Marcie pushed her rage back and tried to explain who she was, for the woman's benefit.

"You won't believe this, but history changed," Marcie said, already winded, emotionally. "I'm...your daughter, ma'am. At least, I was in another life."

"In another life?" the woman asked, taken aback. "Then, those strange stories were all true."

"Stories?"

"All my life," she said. "I've heard about this place. Everyone has. Crystal Cove, punished by the gods and trapped in the prison of a history that wasn't ours. I've seen all of the documentaries and crazy conspiracy theories, out there, but I can't believe that no one ever had the courage to just...come here. Maybe, I'm the first."

"Maybe," Marcie deadpanned, her head hung low.

The woman, suddenly, felt like a fool for gushing on about mysterious towns, when this girl's world, clearly, was crashing down around her. "I'm sorry. I don't know why I stated talking about that nonsense. You're hurting, and I couldn't even imagine how much. Look, since I came all this way, let's…let's talk. My name is Annie."

Marcie gave a sad glance at Annie, and saw the awkward sincerity in her eyes. She knew that it wasn't her fault, and that it would have been wrong to take it out on her, so she, reluctantly, nodded and accepted her offer.

"Okay, what do you do?" Marcie muttered.

"Well, I live not too far from here, in Gatorsburg, and I work as a forensics scientist for the police department. I know chemistry sounds boring, and it's not as glamorous as chasing down the bad guy, but I like science, and it helps me solve mysteries in my own way, you know?"

Marcie found herself smiling, and becoming engaged in the conversation. "Believe it or not, I do, and trust me; I do _not_ think chemistry is boring. In fact, someone once told me "There's no mystery without the _che_ mistry.""

That brought a sudden chuckle from Annie. "That's pretty good. Who said that?"

Marcie's face fell from the memory. "My mom. Look, I know things must feel a little strange to you, ma'am, and you probably just want to go back to whatever's normal, but it's pretty strange for me, too. My mother's gone, and I...don't know if I'm strong enough to move on, right now. So, I was wondering if…maybe, we could get to know each other."

Again, Annie was taken aback. She didn't know this poor girl, at all, and already, things seemed to be going too fast for the both of them.

"Are you sure?" she asked, carefully. "I don't want to, somehow, bring your hopes up with me, and you wind up getting hurt, all over again."

"I'm sure!" Marcie insisted. "I mean you like chemistry, and I'm pretty good with chemistry, and I like solving a good mystery, too! Maybe...we could start with that."

Annie gave a thoughtful sigh, and carefully considered. "Well, I don't think I could ever replace your real mother, but I wouldn't mind you being my friend, Marcie. I'd like that, very much."

Marcie looked as though she had been given a reprieve from the state, and asked, awkwardly, "Annie, I know this sounds all kinds of strange, but...could I...give you a hug?"

At first, the woman felt regret for satisfying her curiosity and coming to the hospital, fearing that her very presence was, actually, detrimental to Marcie's emotional recovery, at this point. It was clear that she was reaching out for anything she could use as an emotional life preserver.

But then, Marcie's plight so moved Annie that she put herself in the teen's shoes, and found herself confessing to herself that she would be doing the exact same thing, if someone else was there. How could she refuse her?

Annie said, with a wan, maternal smile, "Of course, you can."

She walked over to Marcie's bed, leaned over, and let the heart-broken girl squeeze all the stress, pain, tears, and loss from her, as the woman, gently, held the back of Marcie's head, and felt her hiccup and sob, quietly, against her chest.

* * *

Marcie was sitting up in bed, alone. It was a little past noon, and she was tucking into her delivered lunch, when the door knocked, once more.

With a mouthful of burger, she said, "Come in."

She brightened when her father, Winslow entered, carrying of all people, not a person, at all, but a familiar Siamese cat.

"Marcie!" her father greeted, as Mr. Schrödinger hopped from his arms, and Winslow gave her a sincere kiss on the forehead, before he pulled a nearby chair next to her bed

Marcie noticed that Winslow was looking a touch sheepish through his square glasses, as he sat down.

"I was so worried when I saw you fighting, that day, over the park. How are feeling? I...I truly missed you," he said, sounding more sorrowful than relieved.

But, due to the pained memories their reunion was dredging up, Marcie found that she couldn't hold her head up high, at the moment, either. "I missed you, too, Dad. I wish I…didn't have to run away."

Winslow's eyes flashed in her direction with conviction. "No, you did what you had to do, Marcie. I...said things to you that _no_ father should ever say to his daughter, and I drove you out, that night. I'm really sorry."

That admission made it easier for Marcie to get things off her chest, as well, moving her to say them before another weird thing comes along and impedes it. "I should have said some things, too. I should have told you that I'm proud of you, Dad. It's not easy running the park. It only _looks_ that way because all anybody sees is the fun. You cut corners, sometimes, because you fight for our park, everyday. I didn't see that, not until Greenman and I fought.

"And speaking of Greenman, what happened between us wasn't your fault. He told me that he poisoned you with some magic thorn, when you two first met. It brought out all of the negativity and emotional baggage that was inside of you, that's all."

Winslow stiffened. The thought that some stranger attacked him, and his family, already disquieted him, but his actions were his, regardless. "Well, even if that's true, it still doesn't make any of it right, Marcie. It doesn't matter. If I wasn't carrying all of that emotional baggage, to start with, your mother leaving, the job, Greenman pressuring me, even you wanting to live your own life, that thorn wouldn't have had anything to work with."

"Wherever your mother is, she was right to leave me," he admitted, soberly. "I could see that when even _you_ did, and you were right to say what you said about me on that tape. I do cut too many corners, and don't think of more efficient ways of running things. I was... _am_ a mess."

"Maybe you should just enroll yourself in one of those business seminars," Marcie suggested, lightly, not wishing to see her father beat himself up, so much.

Winslow reached over and held his daughter's hand. It felt like an entire lifetime had passed since he had done that. It was reaffirming, hopeful that this family could knit itself whole, again. "Maybe, but for the time being, could your mother and you both find it in your hearts to forgive a foolish old cheapskate, like me?"

Pulling her hand from his, Marcie leaned over and held her father, who held her back, firmly. With the loss of their Anne, and moistening eyes, she said to him, "We're all we've got, Dad. You bet."

"Er, not to interrupt, honestly, but I was wondering if there was any room for an ex-Head Director who will soon be down on his luck?" asked a voice from the floor.

Releasing Winslow, Marcie wiped her eyes, looked down and regarded the cat. "What's up, Schrödinger?"

"Well, it seems that Doctor Moon left us," he said.

"He went back to the main facility?"

"No."

"Where did he go?" she asked.

"Well...that sort of depends on what kind of person he was in life," Schrödinger answered, cryptically. Marcie deduced it, soon enough.

"Oh. I'm sorry to hear that," she commiserated.

"Not as sorry as I am," he sniffed. "Moon was the public face of Sundial. With his passing, the others decided that they didn't want _my_ face replacing his, so they, essentially, fired me."

"Bummer."

"At least, I had a chance to meet my successor," the cat sighed.

"Who is he?"

"The board told me that, _she_ , believe it or not, comes from the future, and because of her future knowledge, those sneaks had put her on the payroll, as a futurist, while they secretly groomed her to replace poor old Moon," he explained. "She wasn't ready when _I_ filled his shoes, but now, apparently, she is."

It wasn't an important question, but curiosity made Marcie ask, "What does she look like?"

Schrödinger motioned to Winslow. "Mr. Fleach, if you would?"

Her father took out a photo from one of his outer coat pockets, and handed it to Marcie.

A bubbly, young brunette with extremely large pig-tails, stood in the middle of a group photo. She wore a yellow bodysuit and matching boots over a rose unitard, surrounded by excited board members.

From where Marcie looked, some of the board members looked more excited than others, amorously so. "Obviously, they like her assets," she quipped under her breath.

"Obviously," Schrödinger jeered. "In any event, in a few weeks' time, Miss Cordelia Cakes, although I don't know why she insists on everyone calling her _Cupcake_ , will be the newest and youngest Head Director of Sundial."

"So, what happens, now?" Marcie asked.

It was the cat's turn to look sheepish to Marcie. "Now...I'm a cat without a think tank. So, I was wondering if maybe...you might..."

"Like having a talking cat as a pet?" Marcie finished his pitch, with a scoff. "Like my life isn't weird enough."

"Now, Marcie, be fair and hear him out. From what he's told me, he's helped you, plenty," Winslow told her. "But, if you decide to keep him, he's your responsibility."

Out of all the words in their exchange that were said, one stood foremost in Schrödinger's mind. "Pet?" the cat fretted. "Hmm, that doesn't sound very equitable to me."

Marcie glanced down at him. She heard about cats being fussy to their owners, and wanted to nip that in the bud as best she could, and as soon as possible.

"You'll have food and a warm place to stay," she deadpanned.

Schrödinger considered, for a moment. It was true that he was still a house pet under Dr. Moon, when the man was alive, but his life was filled with culture, intellectual pursuits, and the high living that came with living under a Head Director.

Things would be different, simpler maybe, with this family, but that wasn't necessarily a bad thing. If Nova could pull it off...

In the end, he pragmatically shrugged, and said, "Eh, I'm flexible."

He then hopped up onto her warm lap and purred in satisfaction, as she, lightly, scratched behind his pointed ear.

* * *

It was a few hours into the afternoon, when a knock came from the door of a recovery room in the obstetrics ward.

"Come in," a man's voice bade, and Marcie, awkwardly piloting a wheelchair, maneuvered into the room. There, she saw Cassidy Owens lying in bed, being looked after by her husband, Ricky, there on a visit.

"Marcie!" Ricky brightened, upon seeing her wheel in. "Cassidy and me wanted to thank you so much for saving us, but you still resting from your surgery. How are you feeling?"

Marcie nodded to the couple. "I'm feeling much better, Mr. Owens. I just wanted to come by to see how you and Mrs. Owens were doing. A little bird, _literally,_ told me that you were having twins."

Chuckling, Cassidy already figured who that could be. "Oh, that parrot! He just can't wait until the kids call him "Uncle Pericles." The little angels arrived about a week ago. Even though your father and we had to get looked at for smoke inhalation, the babies came through, just fine."

"I'm glad," said Marcie. The thought of motherhood seemed to fascinate her, and so, she asked, "Did you name them, yet?"

"We did," Ricky nodded. "The boy's named Joseph."

"And the girl's name is Hanna," Cassidy added. "Hanna _Marcia_ Owens."

It took a second for Marcie's brain to process that newly introduced piece of information. When she understood what the girl was named, and _why_ , decorum forced her to cover her mouth, to vainly hide her emotions.

Their gratitude for the rescue, alone, while not important, but would have been enough for her, but the lasting glory of a new life bearing her name, was overwhelming. She was glad that she was already seated.

"You...You named her after...me? I-I don't know what to say! Thank you!" she gasped. "Thank you _so much_!"

Ricky shook his head, as he sat by his wife's side. "No, Marcie. Thank _you_. If you hadn't saved our family from that dingbat, then Hanna would never grow up knowing why she was given your name."

"What you did for us, for this family, we could never repay, because you helped us hold on to something that we could _never_ replace," Cassidy said. "Thank you, Marcie. From the bottom of our hearts, thank you, and bless you."

Not used to any of this, Marcie felt the weight of their honest deference upon her shoulders and, especially, her heart. It radiated and warmed her in the cool air of the hospital, like sunshine. After all the chaos and confusion she and her friends had to endure, this was a reward worthy of all of it.

Ricky and Cassidy Owens were the wealthiest pillars of the community this town ever opened to, a celebrated couple on the cutting-edge of technological advancement and big business. But here, they weren't titans of industry; they were simply a grateful family, who felt blessed to know that this awkwardly grinning teenager was in their lives.


	10. Chapter 10

Humanity always had a profound way of overcoming hardship and adapting to just about any circumstance they came across. This then was its toughest test yet, and gradually, Crystal Cove met that challenge.

At first, the awesome concept and presence of time travel was not readily accepted, when it was divulged to the citizens. It was seen as a desperate hoax told to take advantage of the town's confusion, with most chalking up the weirdness outside of town to mass mind-control, either chemically or electronically sent, or even the sinister, nebulous efforts of an alien invasion.

In the end, a select portion of townsfolk was invited on a controlled visit of the Sundial facilities, and shown, first hand, that time travel existed, by taking them a few days in the future, telling them to record what they saw or heard, and then, comparing those findings in a few days, hence. They became believers in short order.

It, then, became easier to explain to them that Everest Greenman had gone back in time, himself, and rewrote history, so that Druidic faith dominated. As a result, everything and everyone they had ever known was changed. Some of their kin still managed to exist in the new timeline, but because they now had different personal histories than what they had, originally, they had no recollection of old friends and family they previously had.

Other family members were, for whatever reason, wiped from history, altogether, and so, because of the global scope of the upheaval caused in the name of iron-clad dogmatism, naked power, and blind vengeance, in the end, it wasn't hard for the citizens of Crystal Cove and elsewhere, to consider, for future history, Everest Greenman, and even Benton Quest, to be to religious intolerance, lack of scientific ethics, and even temporal abuse, what Hitler and Göring were to democracy.

So, it was that the surviving, Crystal Cove branch of Sundial became, unexpectedly, the people's hope, transforming overnight from the remnant of a think tank, into a civic and social healer.

Utilizing cutting-edge genealogy software, normally used to trace bloodlines in the past, to avoid paradoxes, Sundial began systematically locating surviving, alternate family members in the new timeline, and proved itself indispensable in reconnecting with those people.

Along with the efforts of re-establishing familial ties and global contact, all of the citizens, as one, endeavored to cleanse themselves of the collective stain of grief they still carried, with the start of what was to be an annual, memorial service set up by Sundial and the town government, dedicated to the friends and loved ones who were lost to this new history.

Soon afterwards, Velma's secret, whitehat efforts in hacking into Greenman's vast fortune, bore fruit, as news organizations began reporting of the world's other faiths, not extinguished by Greenman's pogrom, now enjoying the largest donations in their modern history, along with reports of new churches being constructed and missionaries starting their tours of the world.

Still, the world was, for good or ill, mostly pagan, for now. Druids, however, were shown to be more than just an order. They were learned and highly-admired men and women, who held not only religious roles, but were also doctors, teachers, and other necessary fulfillers of a given society. Only their gods and culture were different, and considering the vast number of faiths already on tap, who was to say that their beliefs were at odds with any other?

It was inevitable that there would be the occasional misunderstandings and culture clashes, to be sure, but it was the resultant talks, the discussions from such things, that helped create or mend the bridges between the two cultures.

Thus, in time, strange, pagan-sounding businesses took over for the ones that were looted and abandoned, and new concepts were being understood, or at least, tolerated. Rediscovered loved ones were, gradually, being accepted for their new differences, hearts were healing, and Crystal Cove, as a whole, was transforming.

Marcie sat up in her familiar brass bed, at home, facing her laptop's web cam, and watching Velma's animated face, as she told her that she had been released from the hospital, a few days ago.

"We saw you fighting that Greenman guy on TV," Velma said from her laptop, sitting by a Gothic fountain, in the campus of Miskatonic University. "That was intense! I'm just glad you're okay. What's going on at home?"

It was a little strange to hear her refer to the alternate Crystal Cove as 'home,' but it was understandable to Marcie. This was all about fulfilling a need.

Velma, if not the rest of her friends, realized, with the death of her parents, she needed to ground herself in a Crystal Cove, _any_ Crystal Cove, to feel as if she still had a place of connection, a place to feel anchored to, and privately, Marcie nursed a desire of her own to reconnect with the alternate Anne Fleach.

"Well, Mayor Nettles unveiled a new sign for the town, the other day. Now it says, "Crystal Cove. The Most Timeliest Place on Earth," Marcie related.

"Timeliest? Why that?"

"Because, according to Sheriff Stone, her administration had just made a business deal with Sundial to boost the financial budget of the town through the roof, with _time-tourism_ ," Marcie said.

"Time-tourism?"

"First, plans are in the works for the world's first Time Museum. Visitors could dress in period clothing and be brought to various historical points in this world's new past. They would have added Crystal Cove's local past to the itinerary, but Mr. D didn't like them competing with his local museum, so they compromised."

"That makes sense," Velma nodded. "Dad was pretty proud of his museum, back home."

"Second, and this is most cool, my dad's amusement park's been given a new lease on life with that ley line fountain on the property. Not only was it powering the disruption that protected Crystal Cove from the timeline change, but now, thanks to both Creationex and Sundial, the park is going to host a joint research facility on the premises to monitor and study ways to use that power, commercially."

"Wow! That's fascinating! Have they started, already?"

"Well, they've already working on a tap to harness the energy to run the park, first," Marcie pointed out. "Then, in a few years, if the park doesn't blow up, they'll try to adapt it for town-wide use, and in the future, a state-wide grid could be developed. If this works out, the whole country could be running on, probably, the cleanest energy there is... _magical_!"

"You know, there was a time when I wouldn't have believed in any of it, but now, I guess, anything can happen," Velma smirked, wistfully.

"V, you're preaching to the choir. Anyway, Creationex is paying to rebuild the park, and Dad's as giddy as a schoolgirl over that. He's working on shooting a new commercial for the park, and everything. "Welcome to the grand reopening of Fleach's Folly Factory, the only amusement park in the world powered by magic!""

Velma's face softened with admiration over the screen. "I'm glad for you, Marcie. You really deserved it."

"Thanks, V. Well, I better get a move on. I have to meet up with the gang." Marcie then stopped to think about what she had just said, and it tickled her. Had it been so long ago, when she had only her Velma to count as her friend? "Gang. Ha, I've got a _gang_ , now!"

"Then, you look after them, Marcie," Velma counseled. "I've seen the power of a good gang change the world."

Marcie asked, "Yours?" Velma shook her head.

"Yours."

* * *

The outdoor wedding ceremony, being held on the property of the Blake Mansion, was both stately, and a curio.

At first, any invited guest would take in the opulence of the affair, and know that for their daughter, Daphne, Barty and Nan would spare no expense.

The surroundings were, literally, brilliant in pure, traditional white, satin festoons draped the scene, tall, flanking trellises were decorated in fragrant, pink flowers, large rows of orderly seating were arranged from best- to least-favored guest, a small orchestra played lilting melodies while everyone got settled in, and a beautiful ice sculpture standing near a heroically catered buffet table, caught the light of the noon day in its wet facets.

On the other hand, some elements of the setting were noticeably different. Encircling the entire the wedding party was a circle of stones and crystals, serving as a marker, and up ahead of the guests, an alter was set up, along with an ornate table holding a small bell, and a red, silk ribbon.

Most of the gang sat in their row of white chairs, either fidgeting with neckties, like Red, glancing expectantly at the buffet table, like Jason, or intrigued by the whole display, like Marcie and Velma.

Reporters who wrote for the society section of _The Crystal Crier_ , were on hand, far outside the periphery of the circle, taking pictures and notes of the event, while Dawn, Dorothy, and Delilah, serving as bridesmaids, appeared and cast wildflowers among the stones of the circle.

Suddenly, Red gave a loud whistle upon seeing Daisy, as the maid of honor, approach the alter in a flowing, eye-catching gown and a circlet of flowers in her done-up hair, holding a small, silk pillow, in its center, sat Fred's old wedding ring, cleaned and polished for the occasion.

She waved to him, as she stood next an anxious, suited Shaggy Rogers, holding Daphne's old wedding ring on a similar pillow, a grinning Scooby-Doo, and a tuxedoed Barty, who glanced, proudly, to Nan, who sat in the front row, beaming in a splendid gown of her own.

The presider, a thin, bespectacled priest, took his position behind the alter party, as they, and indeed, everyone else, waited for the honored participants to arrive.

The priest picked up the bell from the table, and, with an even tinier hammer, softly, struck it three times, quieting the guests and beginning the ceremony.

Outside the stone and crystal ring, from the east, where the sun rose and, where it was said, growth in a relationship was symbolized, young Fred Chiles, wearing a finely-tailored suit.

As red symbolized life, he wore a red bowtie, and was greeted with quiet gasps and murmurs of admiration from the attendees, particularly, his proud mother and father.

He glanced over to see his wife before, and to be, again, Daphne Blake, dressed in a stunning gown of pure white, but contrasted with a crimson veil.

They stood side-by-side, held hands, and slowly began walking the length of the circle, meeting smiling relatives, acquaintances, and dear friends. They did this circuit, once, and then, returning to the eastern side of the circle, they entered it.

Joining with the party standing at the alter, the priest ritually asked why they were here, to which Fred and Daphne declared, in unison, their intent to be as one, under Heaven, in front of family and friends.

The priest then regarded the others in attendance, asking if anyone present has any reason why the couple should not be so joined. Respectfully, no one spoke.

Then, Fred recited a statement, one prepared by the both of them, saying to a smiling Daphne, "I, Fred Chiles, commit myself to be with Daphne Blake, in delight and hardship, in feast and famine, in concord and strife, living with her, faithfully, all of my days. May my heart have the strength to keep these vows."

With that, he took the offered ring from Shaggy, and slipped it over her slender finger. Then, Daphne repeated the statement to a proud Fred, and adorned his finger with the ring that Daisy gave to her.

The couple then faced each other, joining their left and right hands together. If viewed from above, their arms and bodies formed a figure 8, the universal symbol of infinity, and an ancient, religious symbol for the union of a man and woman.

The priest took the long, red ribbon from the table, and reverently, laced it over the couple's wrists, tying them together, loosely. After a minute, the bonds were removed.

A word of matrimonial counsel was then offered by the priest to the young couple, after which, he asked the assembled guests whether they would support the couple in their new relationship together.

With a simultaneous nod, they answered "I do." Grinning, the priest, happily, pronounced Mr. and Mrs. Fred Chiles to be _hand/wedded_ as husband and wife, climaxing with the two of them kissing, to thunderous applause, as if today was their last chance on Earth to do so.

While the re-newlyweds waved to their loved ones and friends, Barty, seated next to Nan, muttered with some uncertainty, "I'm so glad that Daphne is getting a _real_ wedding, _and_ that this will be seen as the most expensive one we've ever thrown, love of my life, but I don't know if I'm comfortable with this traditional-slash-handholding thing."

"I think they call it hand _fasting_ , dear, and I wouldn't worry." Nan coaxed. "Our little Daphne and Freddy are just mixing things up. They're young and curious, just like we were. Remember, dearest?"

"Oh, how could I forget, Sugar beet?" he agreed, wistfully, holding his wife's hand. "I had a trust fund, and you had your father's inheritance. Our folks said that it would never work out between us, but here we are."

"Okay, girls!" Daphne called out to her sisters, while brandishing her bouquet. "Here it comes!"

Turning her back to them, she tossed the flowers high over her head. They arced into the waiting claws of Daisy and the other Blake Sisters, who jumped like breeching sharks in a blood frenzy.

In the chaotic scrum, Daisy was, unknowingly, knocked to the ground, falling on her fanny and looking quite undignified in her formal attire, while the bouquet bounced from one pair of groping hands to the other, until the arrangement was knocked too high for any sister to reach, and fell into a surprised Daisy's lap, with Daphne, enjoying the ritual, and applauding her sister's good fortune.

Looking up through her undone hair, Daisy saw Red offering his hand to help her up.

"Hey, Daisy," he said, while she dusted herself off with her prize. "If we ever, y'know, like, get married, someday, maybe we should take this hand stuff to the next level. How about hand _cuffing_! How metal is that?"

"Hmm," she muttered, considering it, but because of her thoughtful silence, Red feared that it wouldn't be her cup of tea.

She gave him an almost naughty smile, and then, said, finally, "Only if _I'm_ in charge of the key!"

Red nodded. "All right!"

* * *

The warm ocean washed over Marcie and Velma's bare feet, while they carried their shoes and socks, talking and walking along the flowing surf of Crystal Cove Beach on a breezy Saturday.

The day, in all its calm nature, was a balm to both of them. In the days and weeks prior, emotions had ascended and descended with all the reckless speed of an out-of control ride, something Marcie knew, firsthand, and they just needed to decompress.

"I've looked up everything on that Fear guy you dreamed about," Velma said, curling her toes in the soft sand. "You, probably, did, too, and got the same result, an evil druid in Celtic Mythology, although some, also, refer to him as a fairy. Maybe that's why he's so evil. My guess is that you've been researching too many folktales when you were dealing with Greenman."

Marcie shook her head, with a sigh. "After all I've been through, V, I'm still not sure it's all mythological, anymore, _or_ that I hallucinated him, while I was unconscious. Normally, you forget about dreams, after a while, but it still feels like I actually talked to him. I can still remember."

Velma looked uncomfortable. "On the subject of remembering things, I want to say that I'm sorry for calling you a workaholic. I'm your friend, Marcie, and I shouldn't have said that."

"That's all right, V. You said that _because_ you're my friend, and you called it. I do bury myself in my work, sometimes. Now, if you had called me Hot Dog Water, _then_ I would have been insulted," she joked.

"So, how did it feel to fly in the suit?"

"I felt so...free, even when I was getting beat to a pulp," Marcie said, looking to the skies with a wistful smile. "I was actually _flying_! But, with the suit trashed, I won't be doing that again, for a little while. Luckily, Jason said that Questoid skin is just as tough as Lilith's, and we've got a ton of that, in that van, in the junkyard, so we can repair it. Plus, I've got some ideas to improve the suit, so we're planning a raid on that abandoned Quest lab, pretty soon."

"So, chemist, mystery-solver, cosplayer, and now, lab raider, huh?" Velma asked, conversationally. "Quite the renaissance woman."

"Well, I wouldn't go _that_ far, but thanks," said Marcie, then noticed that Velma looked uncomfortable, once more. "What's wrong, V?

"I don't know, Marcie," Velma said, quietly. "Ever since my friends and I came back home, things have been feeling so _different_...to me."

"You've got to admit, V, everything's kind of different, _these_ days," Marcie chuckled, but Velma shook her head.

"No, I mean...with me and the others."

That confused Marcie.

Velma explained further. "When I was little, I heard my dad sing this little song. When I asked him what it was, he told me that it was called, _"Those Wedding Bells Are Breaking Up That Old Gang Of Mine."_ I didn't think anything about it, until now."

"How come?"

"I think we're starting to drift apart," Velma sighed. "Fred and Daphne are married...again, and soon, they'll be _way_ too busy starting a new life together. Shaggy's always been focused on his restaurant career, and said that he's got his sights set on being the executive chef of Andre's Entrées, one day. And Scooby...Scooby's just Scooby. He'll always join him at the hip."

Marcie nodded, understanding dawning. "So, you're starting to feel like a fifth wheel, huh?"

"Not exactly, a fifth wheel implies that the wheel is still a part of something, just not as important. I feel like a wheel that's coming off, not really part of the gang, anymore. I know that there's nothing stopping us from keeping in touch, but I can't help thinking that...maybe they don't need me, anymore."

The tint of her sadness couldn't be more on display in front of Marcie, looking at her and listening with concern.

Velma saw Marcie's quiet look and sighed, almost bitterly. "I know, _I know_. I'm ruining this perfect day. I sound so selfish. I should just shut up, be happy for them, and move on with my life."

Marcie still looked at her, giving the impression of someone trying quite hard to work out what to say, which now concerned Velma.

"What's wrong?" she asked.

Sighing, Marcie stopped walking, looked into her eyes, and spoke as measured as her wrestled feelings allowed her. "I...know I'm probably going way too fast with all of this, but I had a _lot_ of time to think about all that happened, and I realized that time may be powerful, but it sure as heck's not guaranteed. If you want something bad enough, you have to go and get it. Time took you away from me, but you're back, now, and I'm not going to waste any more of it."

Velma was surprised and curious at her friend's sudden, emotional change in mood. There was something all of this was leading up to, and she had to find out. "What are you saying, Marcie?"

Her hands jumped a little when Marcie gently held them. "V...will you be my partner?"

To say that Velma was stunned was an understatement for the ages.

"Marcie...I..." she began to say, blushing deeply and fighting to recover the power of coherent speech and regular breathing.

Velma was swept away by the raw power of that question and the impetus behind it. She had rarely been the center of other people's attention, but now, to experience that attention so strongly focused on her, and her, alone, was both flattering and completely breathtaking.

It was a heady ride, and part of her wanted to stay on it, but her knees felt weak, and she needed to slow down, at least, for now.

It was the recent wedding, Velma knew, its strong feelings carried over to today, for Marcie.

Velma wanted to tell her, as gently as she could, that it was too soon for her, that they both needed more time before they took such a life-changing step, but Marcie, blushing just as deeply as she was, tried to stutter an explanation.

"I mean in, uh... _mystery-solving_ ," she gulped, clumsily. "I...um, know how much you used to like playing those mystery games with me, like _What? Deduce!_ and _The Young Detective_ , when we were little, so, uh...I, um...uh, figured, uh, thought, y'know...thought we could, um...uh-"

Velma thought about what a friend Marcie Fleach was being to her, that she could see how lonely she was, and how eager Marcie was to fill that sad void that was opening up inside her.

But also, overlooking the miscommunication, her heart couldn't help but be totally and utterly endeared and charmed by her. This fellow nerdy, teenaged girl, who proved to be far more powerful than she looked, by taking down the most dangerous man in the world, was, herself, turning into a stammering bowl of jelly, all because of her.

Smiling warmly, Velma gently put a quieting finger to Marcie's lips, and said to her, softly, "Tell you what. Promise to take me on a ride, when your suit's fixed, and I will."

Despite her hammering heart, Marcie smiled, lopsidedly, back.

Satisfied and resuming their walk, she sighed, contemplatively. "Anyway, it's a new world, now. Talk about culture shock. Now, I know how Mystery Incorporated must've felt when _they_ first came here, but we'll do what we do best, and adapt. Besides, it doesn't matter what the world's turned into, as long as you're there with me."

A flash of rose returned to Velma's cheeks. Platitudes would have been fine, even expected, in a way, but for her to know that Marcie desired to stick with her through the bad times, as well as the good, silently spoke volumes about what kind of person she was to Marcie.

"So...if you had a choice, you'd keep the world the way it is, just so long as I was in it?" she asked, knowingly.

As gulls laughed in the distance, Marcie stopped to face her, and look into her eyes, again. "Consistently."

"You know...ordinarily, people would just settle for a friendship bracelet," Velma quipped, softly, trying to control the flutter of her young heart, while she held Marcie's hand. "But, I guess we're not...ordinary, are we?"

Marcie moved closer to her. "I sure hope not."

Velma smiled. "That's my girl."

She remembered asking Marcie earlier what it was like to fly, but then, she discovered that feeling for herself, when Velma looked over the length and breadth of their long friendship, stepped up to its edge, and with the perfect moment, leaped into space, with a kiss upon Marcie's full and inviting lips.

To Marcie, no formula she ever devised was as intoxicating as Velma's kiss. Her secret dreams and long-held expectations about their first romantic embrace, were now, wonderfully underestimated, destroyed and washed away, like their footprints in the playful tide.

As they stood on the surf, with little sighs of relief escaping from their kisses, they both had a clue that this new world that found themselves in the middle of, was nothing, compared to the one they found, together.

The End


End file.
